Couple months back, I was really delighted, when I finally got hold of a rather pricey adapter from The Flash Centre, that allowed me to connect my Canon EX 580 flash with a Pocket Wizard transmitter since the earlier EX 580 flashes lack the standard pc-sync socket. It meant that I could trigger both my EX 580 II and the older EX 580 strobes with my Pocket Wizards from then on – theoretically. It soon turned out, that for some reason, the EX580`a power output cannot be adjusted as smoothly as my EX 580II`s output. I`m not sure whether it applies only to my unit or it`s a wider problem but I needed a solution.
So I started to look for a cheap flash unit that allows me full manual control. Being familiar with the renowned Lighting 101 manual by David Hobby, I came to the conclusion that snatching a Nikon SB 24 from Ebay would provide me with what I need. Though it only works in Nikon hotshoes, and only in manual mode (no TTL, not even on Nikon bodies), that I would not mind as I`m planning to use it only off the camera.
It soon turned out, however, that this won`t be an easy task as the supply of such speedlights is rather scarce and whenever one surfaces, it is sold at quite high prices (£60+).
I turned to ebay.de which offers a bit more reasonable prices (EUR50+) but the days when one could snatch such a flash for peanuts is way behind us.
