Well, I bit the bullet and bought the Norman “manual” strobe system because I have never been happy with the ETTL Canon flashes, the output and the inconsistency I couldn’t ever seem to get sorted out.

[1] http://normanlights.com/battery_systems_compkits.asp

The weird thing was I could not find hardly any good definitive technical information (like, what kind of sync cord does this thing need?  Do I need an adapter for my Canon hotshoe?)

Turns out the website is unbelievably bad, dead links all over the place.  They make some of the finest workhorse portrait/wedding lighting around, but they don’t have much in the way of a marketing department I guess since they got purchased by Promark International.

But it has 400WS, Guide 168 at ISO 100 and should blast some serious light when I do my upcoming Beckman Coulter event.  I prefer manual shooting anyway, so this is right up my alley; a portable studio strobe!

This model doesn’t include the built-in Pocket Wizard, but I have 4 of them I can just plug in if I want to use as an off-camera light, bounce, etc.  I can’t wait to play with it!!