There are a lot of directions you can go, as you know. At its heart, you will be choosing how you want to approach things. You can dump all of that money into something like the Sigma 530, which can function as a slave and also supports ttl and power adjustments from 1/1 to 1/128, as well as zoom and swivel. On the other hand, you could look into either picking up an older used flash or something like the Vivitar 285HV. It's cheaper, doesn't have the same power variability, and will require you to use add a means of triggering it (something like a Wein Peanut slave if you're looking cheap). Both flashes would then be triggered by your onboard flash, so they would be susceptible to being triggered by other photographers and the reliability of firing goes down in bright sunlight and with distance. This approach will have manual only control both on and off camera. There are lots of other flashes in this category to be had, both new and used. For new, there is the LumoPro 160 and there are also several models from Yongnuo, some of which do offer ttl.
A discussion of all the used flashes that would be suitable for this is a bit outside the breadth of a single post.
The two approaches have good and things about them. Going with the manual flashes will teach you how to use flash but may be a bit frustrating at first for getting exposure. Unless you're using a lightmeter, you'll have to take several exposures, beginning with a guess of a power setting and then adjusting accordingly. This means the flash may be sorta frustrating if you plan to use it in changing situations or something like that. The nice thing is it leaves extra room in your budget to put towards light modifiers like an umbrella or something else, or at least towards the materials you could use to make your own modifiers. |
