Canon ML-3 Macro

For years this was the only Canon's macro flash and, honestly saying, it was not the most advanced on the market. Despite of that, it was as expensive as all major-brand macro flashes. For the money you had to pay, you would expect something more than just two half-rings that can be fired simultaneously or separately. The flash itself offers no ANY control - it works always in a simple TTL mode*. If your camera does not offer flash control either, the only option is fiddling with film speed settings. Not the most convenient way. Would you need to make corrections only occasionally, that would not bother me that much. Unfortunately my model ALWAYS requires some adjustments. In general, without correction all macro pictures are underexposed by at least 1/2 EV. What is even worse, this behavior is not very consistent, and probably depends on the flash-to-subject distance. As a result, even after years of work and hundreds of pictures taken with this flash, I usually try to make 2-3 pictures at different exposures to be sure that at least one will come out fine. This is probably my greatest complain about the Canon setup I use. I hope that these problems have been fixed in their two newest models for macro photography. Unfortunately both are even more expensive than ML-3 was used to be, so I will probably have to work with it for the next few years. If you, however, are free from these limitation, try the new one; the ML 3 should be the last choice.

*Be aware that the ML-3 does NOT work in ETTL mode, and because of that is incompatible with some newest bodies and p&s cameras (e.g., EOS 300D, EOS 10D, EOS 1D, G5 and probably some other models).