I have ElanIIE with 380EX. I plan to upgrade to a better flash. 550EX is too expensive so I plan to get Sigma EF-500 Super instead. Anybody has experience with this EF-500 and Elan IIE. Can I disable ETTL with this Sigma flash (The 550ex has CF3 to disable the ETTL)? I have a A-type body and I need to disable ETTL for setting up a multiflash with optical slave. Thank you

-- Patrick Charles (pchar@hotmail.com), March 13, 2002

Answers

i'll give NK Guy a hand with this one:

http://teladesign.com/photo/ef-500-super.html

-- m. lohninger (anavrin@mac.com), March 13, 2002.

Thanks, but Jim Strutz deserves equal credit for writing up the differences. :)

-- NK Guy (tela@tela.bc.ca), March 13, 2002.

Yeah, credit! That's what I need. :~))

As you can read from the site listed above, there is no equivelent of CF#3. You can disable E-TTL in favor of TTL with the addition of Canon's Hot Shoe Adapter 3. It's part of Canon's modular TTL cord set. At $65 additional, this makes the Sigma a bit less attractive.

However, unless the optical slave is an Ikelite Lite-Link TTL slave, and you are trying to maiintain TTL metering, you ought to use manual flash anyway. The Sigma will certainly do that.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), March 13, 2002.