Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite Demonstration

We took five of the new Canon 600EX-RT Speedlites that we received today and thought we would put them to the test to see how effective the built in radio triggers were… and we were very impressed. Not only are these new speedlites powerful, but they are very easy to use! For those of you who don’t know, Canon incorporated a radio trigger feature into this model, it’s not a line-of-sight optical system like prior generations, this is a bona-fide radio frequency that can be used around corners and in different rooms! Canon’s master/slave functionality is completely enhanced in this model camera because you can setup groups, up to five of them, and assign them different modes like ETTL or Manual and you can control the output of each group individually, you can even completely turn off a group… all from the Master flash on your camera. In this case, we put one speedlite in each group.

Ben, Rob and myself set out to demo this new technology by hiding 4 speedlites in the room around corners and behind objects that obstruct line-of-sight. Please note that we set each flash down, tweaked where the light was aiming a little bit after some test shots, and didn’t touch them again until we were done. We made adjustments to each groups power output from the on-camera 600EX-RT. Here is the sequence:

#1 Ambient - All speedlites turned off at the Master flash, this is just a baseline to work from.

#2 Group A - On camera only, all others switched to OFF in the Master settings.

#3 Group B - Behind wall on left, all others switched to OFF in the Master settings.

#4 Group C - Behind Mike's desk, all others switched to OFF in the Master settings.

#5 Group D - Behind Meg's desk, all others switched to OFF in the Master settings.

#6 Group E - On Tony's desk, all others switched to OFF in the Master settings.

#7 All 5 Groups - All speedlites fired at once at various power settings adjusted in Master settings.

For the color temperature fanatics out there… fear not! We purposely didn’t gel the lights, we wanted it to be very clear which lights were being fired for the purpose of this demonstration.

While this isn’t an exhausting review, we just wanted to touch on some of the improvements over the 580EX II and show a very practical application to use this incredible technology. We didn’t have to fumble around with these, it only took us about ten minutes from start to finish to get everything setup, adjusted, and finalized. We were blown away! Each unit even has an LED light on it that turns green when it’s connected to the Master and turns red when it’s not connected. For all you interior/architectural photographers, these will make your job very easy without having to worry about third party triggers. Wedding and event shooters, this is a no brainer! Set one light up on a stand off the dance floor and set it to group B, set your on-camera speedlite to group A and make your adjustments on the fly, these are amazing!

Here is a shot of the back of the unit with three of the five groups visible (you scroll to make the other two visible). The “Link” indicator is green because it’s connected to the other lights, and you can see how we set the power for each individual group. Now, you no longer need to press and hold the zoom button, like on the 580EX II’s, to get the speedlite into master/slave modes, the button on the left that looks like a “Z” is the dedicated button for that. And now, once into Master mode, you can click the “Mode” button to bring up the “Gr” (Group) mode to control the lighting the way we did here today. There is so much this flash can do, we couldn’t possibly list it all here!

Ready to give them a try? Click here to rent the new Canon 600EX-RT’s!