Need Flash Help

[Nasanieru]

Hi DPSers. I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 and as some of you may already know, it does not have a Hotshoe. I want the ability to use soft light and dynamic light for great portrait photography and I currently don't have the budget for a DSLR at this time. I have been looking at a setup something like this;-


Ebay: New Slave Flash For Panasonic LUMIX

I want to know others opinions on these, whether this is a good model and if there are other options for my camera?

[i speak in math]

Any flash with a slave mode will work assuming you can turn off redeye mode on the camera. Soft light doesn't come from having a off camera flash, it comes from the relative size of the light source. Get a big light source relative to the subject, and the light will be soft. A bare flash like that will be harsh and contrasty, not soft, unless you get some sort of modifier for it.

[hifigraz]

I would be careful with the _any_ flash with slave mode would work.
Some only support the brand specific "intelligent" slave modes and not the simple "There is heavy light, lets fire" slave mode....

So get yourself one or two "cheap" slave falshes and respect what mr. pi said about the softness of light.

[sybren]

It's not only the red-eye reduction flashes that can work against you, but also the TTL preflash. There are slaves that can ignore the pre-flash, but most of them won't, so be careful.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by sybren

It's not only the red-eye reduction flashes that can work against you, but also the TTL preflash. ...

Actually, most P&S cameras, even with the hotshoes, don't do TTL. My G9 certainly didn't. My S90 doesn't, either. So they're good candidates for triggering optical slaves. Usually, the only thing you have to do is turn off the red-eye reduction.

However, what I'm doing, since I already have a bunch of Strobist gear, is a little bit different, and a lot more flexible. I gaffer tape or hold a Sonia optical slave over the built-in flash of my S90. The optical slave is connected to my RF-602 transmitter via the transmitter's PC (input) port. I can then do the basic Strobist thang of using the RF-602 receivers on any of my flashes. This is a common way to pimp a Strobist set-up for a P&S camera without a hotshoe. You can google dozens of setups.