I first came around Syl Arena when he wrote an open letter to Canon in which he wrote down his Canon Speedlite Wishlist. Syl is also the man behind speedliting.com an excellent resource for small flash users. He’s an expert in using and teaching the Canon wireless flash system, consider Syl to be the Canon version of Joe McNally.

I’ve never been too fond of the Canon Wireless Flash system. It’s not that it’s not powerful, on the contrary it’s very comparable to Nikon’s CLS system. The biggest difference between the two is that Nikon’s system is pretty easy to use and is well documented in lots of videos and books while you need a degree in rocket science to figure out the Canon system. That’s until now, because Syl Arena has figured it all out and wrote it down for us in Speedliter’s Handbook, learning to craft light with Canon speedlites.

For the kind of work that I mostly do, I still believe that shooting all manual is the best way to go. I could (and probably will) dedicate a whole blog post on why I prefer shooting manual over E-TTL but the most important reasons are the lack of consistency of E-TTL and the limitations of infrared signals. Since I got the new Pocketwizards, the IR-problems are gone and that was all I needed to give the Canon E-TTL system a second chance to see if it can fit into my workflow for certain situations. That’s why I was very keen to get my hands on this book.

I know reviews look suspicious when there’s only positive things in it, so let’s do the downsides first:

There are a number of really great pictures in this book but some pics could have been better. I know that these are just there to illustrate a technique or effect but I’m always more inspired to try out something new if it’s illustrated with a stunning image. But then again, this isn’t an art book and getting only top notch images to illustrate such a vast amount of information, would have delayed this book by a year.

There, that’s it, that’s the only negative thing I have to say about this book and I had to get into an extremely critical mood to find something.

Some will probably argue that the price is another negative thing about this book. And 29 USD for the paperback and 32 for the Kindle edition (which I got) isn’t as cheap as some other photography books. But how many books contain 432 pages of information? Certainly because some of that information is hard to find elsewhere.

This book is more than just the missing manual for the Canon flash system. If you are just starting out with lighting or need to freshen up your knowledge, there’s a lot of info about the characteristics of light and how to apply them. There’s also a good chunk on information about equipment for off-camera flash use. I consider myself pretty well educated about the available gear, but I learned about some brands I never heard before. And then there are countless of little shooting tips.
The great thing is that this book contains all the information a complete newbee in the off-cam flash world would need. And at the same time it contains lots of info for the advanced photographer.

And for those advanced photographers I have a piece of advice: Read this book from cover to back! It’s tempting to skip some chapters and parts but by forcing myself to not do that, I discovered lots of small things about the Canon system that I thought I knew, but didn’t.

The book is well written and extremely well researched. I followed the progress on Syl’s twitter and now I really understand why he put so much work in it. He basically has compiled an encyclopedia of Speedlite info and turned it into a well structured and readable book.

I wish this book would have been available a couple of years back when I started to learn about using flashes. That would have been a serious shortcut in the learning curve. It should be in any Canon photographer’s bookshelf, first to learn the basics, later as a reference guide.