Dave's Favorites: Better Flash Photos With Phoenix

Are you getting frustrated by the limited range of the flash built into your digital camera? Do you want a flash that's farther away from the camera to minimize red eye? Maybe it's time to add an external flash unit and get the ability to take pictures as much as four times farther than you could before.

I've been experimenting with the D91-BZS 4-Stop Digital Slave flash from Phoenix Corporation of America. A slave flash looks like a traditional external flash unit, but thanks to a built-in light sensor, it fires at virtually the same time as your digital camera's built-in flash unit. There's no need to connect cables, and you don't even need a digital camera with an external flash hot shoe connection. Just turn on the flash, and it automatically fires when you take the picture (as long as your digital camera's own flash fires, of course).

I love the convenience of a slave flash. You can position it anywhere you like--on the camera's hot shoe, on a flash bracket, or even on a nearby tabletop. Phoenix includes a small tabletop tripod for the flash as well as a bracket that you can use to mount the flash off to the side of the camera.

The Phoenix D91 works like a charm. It's easy to use, has four aperture/distance settings, and worked perfectly with the digital cameras I tried it with--in fact, I couldn't find a camera in my workshop that it didn't cooperate with. It's priced at $99 and is available from Phoenix.