Flash system for Leica M8?

[dealrocker]

Hello friends..
My brother recently purchased a brand new Leica M8 and looking for a flash system. I must admit that he is not a professional but a serious amateur photographer. After going through some reviews and search he finally narrowed down to the 24D or SF 58 flash unit. He gonna use it only on rare occasion.
Need your advice to choose the best one.

 

[eef]

Hello friends..
My brother recently purchased a brand new Leica M8 and looking for a flash system. I must admit that he is not a professional but a serious amateur photographer. After going through some reviews and search he finally narrowed down to the 24D or SF 58 flash unit. He gonna use it only on rare occasion.
Need your advice to choose the best one.

Sean Reid has a review of the SF 58. He is always worth reading. http://reidreviews.com

 

[charjohncarter]

I'm not familiar with the M8 or this flash, but this is really good advice (from Dante Stella one of us on RFF):

http://www.dantestella.com/technical/fill.html


Most important to me is to use a low ISO, this allows you to be in the acceptable shutter speed range when doing bounce, fill or over powering the sun flash. And to have a flash with lots of power (high Guide Number) for the same reasons. Example, this was taken with a low powered flash gun, the auto setting for my ISO film was F 5.6, I dropped the camera F stop to F 11 to use the flash as fill, but I still had to use 1/500 shutter to achieve a ambient light setting. I could not have done that with any focal plane shutter, so I used my Petri 7s because it is synched at all speeds.

 

[35mmdelux]

The best is a relative term. For RF photography, smaller is better, especially that he'll not use it often. Here the SF24 is best IMHO. Its small enough to be taken along on a usual basis.

I take along a SF20 for my M7, but if it were any bigger it surely would not make the bag.

 

[aniMal]

If he is only going to use it very infrequently, any old flash with auto should do the trick. The M8 is very well protected against damages from the flash, so unless he wants to spend extra money to get the TTL, this could be an option.

I sometimes use some Nikon flashes on mine, and since that is often in a semi-studio setting, I use the preview and histogram to set the power manually...

It all depends on what kind of photography he wants to do, of course it is better with a small dedicated TTL flash if this is for the occasional family or party-shoot!