Been researching various DSLRs for quite some time.

Definitely lean heavily towards the Canons (vs. the Nikons) except for 1 thing...

It appears that the Nikon external wireless TTL flashes seem to greatly eclipse the Canon in terms of functionality and flexibility.

Is that true? It's tough to find a lot of information, and as I'm reasonably new to the subject, difficult to search on. (Figured I'd ask here as there's lots of very knowledgeable users on here. =)

Basically, for instance, I like the way with the D200 you can use the built-in flash to control the wireless units and meter correctly.

Does Canon have the same feature or a way to get the same functionality? I'd like to do some portrait work and this would be very valuable to me.

Any other pros/cons of the external flashes and capabilities between the 2 brands?

Thanks!

 

While it is true that the Nikon D200 has wireless TTL without any accessories, I don't think it really signifies a technological advantage. Nikon decided to build in their wireless transmitter to the D200. You could pick up a wireless transmitter for Canon (the ST-E2).

In the end, this saves you the cost of one external flash. Don't get me wrong. This is a somewhat significant savings. My Canon 550EX was $350 or so for one. However, the flexibility of using your onboard flash as the frontmost light source is questionable at best. When I take portraits, I use practically zero direct light. Since you can't redirect the front flash, I think this would be a drawback in portrait work especially. I don't have experience with the D200 so I don't know if you can use wireless without the flash active, but then what would you use for front illumination? You'd be back to having to buy a front flash.

I'm pretty sure that Canon's implementation of wireless TTL is at least equal to Nikon's. You just need to have an external flash on the camera to control the other units. Newer Canons might have embedded controllers too. I don't really know.

However, something that I have personally learned is that Sigma's implementation of wireless TTL is a reverse engineering of Canon's. I have my one 550EX as the main flash and then I picked up 2 sigma EF500 DG flashes for $120 each on ebay. They work fine in wireless and saved me some considerable money.

 

Nikon definitely has the upper hand in the flash department. The remote capabilities are pretty handy.

You can accomplish the same thing with a Canon, but you'll need to go to the aftermarket. You can pick up some transmitters off ebay for about $40 that will let you fire your slave flashes via radio frequency. This is actually a better setup because your slaves don't need to be in line of sight of the on-camera flash. There's just a little transmitter that plugs into your hotshoe and an adapter that plugs into the sync port on the flash. You don't even necessarily need to use Canon flashes with that adapter, Quantum or Sunpak will work just as well.

The Canon 580EX can also trigger a 430EX using its IR transmitter. Or, you can use an ST-E2 transmitter instead of the 580EX to accomplish the same thing. Of course, these "official" Canon setups are far more expensive than the radio slave option.

 

Interesting. I never thought about looking on ebay for an aftermarket radio transmitter.

Well you learn something new everyday. I wonder if these things will work with the Sigma units...

 

The radio triggers are pretty interesting.

Does this still allow you to do TTL and get the proper light metering and adjustment?

 

The only way to maintain TTL on a Canon system is to use either an ST-E2 transmitter or a 580EX flash mounted in the hotshoe.

To me, TTL is of limited value when using multiple strobes anyway. Usually the purpose of having the multiple strobes is to create dynamic lighting conditions, not merely expose the scene correctly. To get that drama you need to need to have the strobes set to manual and control the light output yourself. The E-TTL system is anything but creative, so you'll likely find yourself fighting it when using multiple strobes. It's great when you're using a single flash on the hotshoe, but not so hot when you're trying to get fancy.

Here's a ton of info on the subject: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index3.html (scroll down about half way down the page to the "Wireless remote control" section)

What do you plan on shooting with your mult-flash setup?