Tuesday, 4 July 2017

Small speed lights for travel photography

A speed light or external flash is something you should carry on you at all times, and this is something I never fully appreciated until I started actually using a speed light. There are times when you need to travel light and carry around the least amount of photography equipment you can get away with, and travel photography is one of them. Whenever I go travelling with the camera I try and travel as light as possible (for a variety of reasons) and scale back as much as I can.

There was a time that if you wanted a powerful speed light or external flash that had manual mode, automatic/TTL mode, HSS mode, second curtain sync mode and stroboscopic mode the flash would be big and heavy, which is not ideal for travel photography.

Fortunately, this time has gone and there are now small and light, i.e. travel friendly, speed lights available that are powerful and also contain the features found on the top end speed lights. These travel friendly speed lights don’t kick out the same amount of power as the large speed lights (and to think they would is a little naïve) but they are not that far off.


The choice of powerful travel friendly speed lights isn’t huge, but there is a good selection available and the ones that consistently get good reviews and write ups include:-

Nissin i40 (Full review here)

GUIDE NUMBER (35MM @ ISO 100) – 27M / FOCAL LENGTH COVERAGE – 24MM – 105MM / RECYCLING TIME – 0.1 – 4 SECS/ ETTL - YES / EV COMPENSATION ON FLASH - +/- 2EV / SLAVE - YES / VERTICAL TILT – 0 – 90 DEGREES/ HORIZONTAL TILT – 0 – 180 DEGREES/ DIMENSIONS – 100MM X 50MM X 50MM/ APPROX PRICE $USD/£GBP - $230/£155/ POWER – 4XAA BATTERIES


Metz 26 (Full review here)

GUIDE NUMBER (35MM @ ISO 100) – 26M/ FOCAL LENGTH COVERAGE – 24MM – 85MM/ RECYCLING TIME – 0.3 – 8 SECS/ ETTL - YES/ EV COMPENSATION ON FLASH - +/- 3EV/ SLAVE - YES/ VERTICAL TILT – 0 – 890 DEGREES/ HORIZONTAL TILT - NONE/ DIMENSIONS – 63MM X 85MM X 85MM/ APPROX PRICE $USD/£GBP - $140/£75/ POWER – 2XAAA BATTERIES


Canon 270 EX (Full review here)

GUIDE NUMBER (35MM @ ISO 100) – 27M/ FOCAL LENGTH COVERAGE – 28MM – 50MM/ RECYCLING TIME – 0.1 – 4 SECS/ ETTL - YES/ EV COMPENSATION ON FLASH - NO/ SLAVE - YES/ VERTICAL TILT – 0 – 90 DEGREES/ HORIZONTAL TILT - NO/ DIMENSIONS – 77MM X 66MM X 65MM/ APPROX PRICE $USD/£GBP - $170/£180/ POWER – 2XAA BATTERIES


Godox TT350 (Full review here)

GUIDE NUMBER (35MM @ ISO 100) – 36M/ FOCAL LENGTH COVERAGE – 24MM – 105MM/ RECYCLING TIME – 0.1 – 2.2 SECS/ ETTL - YES/ EV COMPENSATION ON FLASH - +/- 3EV/ SLAVE - YES/ VERTICAL TILT – 0 – 90 DEGREES/ HORIZONTAL TILT – 0 – 90 DEGREES/ DIMENSIONS – 140MM X 62MM X 38MM/ APPROX PRICE $USD/£GBP -  $85/£70/ POWER – 2XAA BATTERIES


I have tried all the travel friendly speed lights above and all of them are very good, and worth a purchase. The best one, however, will depend on your specific needs and wants, and probably your budget as well.  After a lot of reading, a lot of test shots, and a lot of deliberation the speed light that suited my needs the best was the Godox TT350, and I can honestly say that I am more than happy with my choice.

Related reading

Below are some links to other travel photography and flash photography articles, posts and tutorials you may find interesting. Please feel free to head on over and take a look:-














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