Which flashgun for a Sony A77?

[sduk]

Firstly I should say I mainly concentrate on photographing cars. Last night however was my mum's 60th Party and I was asked (forced lol) to bring the camera along to get some photos for them.

I did the best I could with my 50mm f1.8 as I knew it would be the only lens I had that was fast enough for the low light shots. It was a real struggle even with the ISO up and a high aperture.

So got me thinking about getting a flash gun just to make it easier if I ever brought the camera along to a function again.

Anything particular to go for? or avoid?

Is a flash gun the same as a speedlight?

Any other help would be much appreciated.

Sammy

 

[chris malcolm]

The Sony HVL-43 is Sony's cheapest full-featured system flash. It has all the super features of its bigger brother. Good value, but pricey. Note there are two versions, and you want the one which fits your hot shoe. Make sure your A77 is up to the latest firmware. Some flash exposure problems have been fixed.

If you want something with most of the features check out Sigma Metz & Yongnuo Sony-compatible flashes. If you're prepared to do your own flash exposure control manually there are much cheaper options available, the cheapest of which is probably old 2nd hand film era flashguns, now being given a good run for money value by the cheapest manual control Yongnuo guns. But you have to be prepared to learn the technical details of generic manual flash control. For example the easiest way to get good party photos which look naturally lit is to bounce a few powerful radio triggered manual flashguns off the ceiling from the corners of the room. But that amount of flash could be asnnoyingly intrusive.

I'm surprised you couldn't get good shots with your 50mm f/1.8 however. I've used 35mm & 50mm lenses at f2.8 in really dim parties with my A77, shutter speeds of between 1/15th & 1/60th, auto ISO however high it needed to go, shooting RAW. I raised them to f2.8 to get better IQ & more DoF. After careful post processing of noise reduction (usually with Neat Image) I've managed to get good enough shots that people have asked for prints and commented on the much superior image quality compared to what others were getting with their point & shoot compacts using flash. You can get much better noise reduction using good quality specialised noise reduction programs than just letting auto noise reduction do its thing. I usually get the equivalent of around an extra two stops of light in noise reduction.

A less intrusive and easier to manage kind of party portrait lighting is to use a portable battery powered LED panel of the kind used by video shooters. Enough light to reduce ISO very usefully, and you can easily hold it off camera with one hand and move it around to get a visibly good effect. Much less guesswork than with flash.

Another useful trick is simply to check out the existing room lighting, get permission, and arrive with a pocketful of more powerful bulbs to switch in.

 

[pingu666]

I have a metz that's decent, ttl its a 50 af-1 model

you should budget around 10 to 40 quid on accessories so you can avoid gargage flash look and colour balance the flash too
stofen, mini softbox or reflector

camera battery grip really helps reduce the tippy feeling of oncamera flash

or buy a instax and stack of film

 

[Snapsh0t]

I've got some suitable Sony flashes I was about to put on eBay. Let me know if you're interested and I'll put them in the sales forum here.

For your camera you need flashes ending in AM so HVL-F43AM. The newer models end in just M and have the current Multi Interface shoe rather than the older Autolock.