If, like me, you love using flash to control your lighting, balance ambient sunlight and make your people pictures pop with pin-sharp precision then you’ll probably be in the market for a flashgun. As a mirrorless Canon photographer there are a few options to choose from such as the Canon Speedlite EL-10 costing $239/£249 and its bigger brother, the Canon Speedlite EL-1 at $1249/£1299, which are two of Canon’s most eye-catching offerings.
The Speedlite EL-10 is a very capable flashgun and doesn’t break the bank, whereas the EL-1 is Canon’s best Speedlite to date and comes packed to the rafters with top features – it even gets a red ring around the flash head to show it’s built to the same L-series quality as Canon’s top flight optics, so is clearly aimed at professionals. But is it really five times better as the price difference would suggest? Well, I recently got hold of both to find out just that.
One of the biggest differences between the two is that the cheaper EL-10 uses Canon’s newer 21-pin Multi-Function shoe which is a more modern shoe for better communication and enhanced features. Rather annoyingly the more premium EL-1 (both Ver.1 and Ver.2) use the older 5-pin shoe design, though this means it will work with new and older Canon’s with no problems.
The guide number of the EL-1 is about 50% higher than the EL-10, so it’s hands-down the more powerful of the duo, it can also be stopped down to just 1/8192 power, where the EL-10 can only go as low as 1/1024, so there’s greater control across the board. The flagship EL-1 also comes with features desirable features including Continuous Shooting Priority, a fan for active cooling, weather-sealing, faster recycling times and clip-on color gels.
Rather annoyingly, the EL-10 lacks some of the hardware on the outside of the flash body that used to be fairly standard across Speedlite models. This means if you need a AF Assist Beam, external metering and optical transmission receivers or an external power supply port the you have no option but to splash out on the EL-1.
I still maintain that the Speedlite EL-10 offers brilliant bang for your buck and I’d bet most enthusiast photographers would get a lot of use out of it. If, however, you’re a working pro and you’re planning to put your kit through the wringer in harsh conditions, such as weddings or extreme sports, then I absolutely think the EL-1 is the way to go as it’ll be able to deliver the results in those harsh conditions.
If you’re still torn between these two camps, don’t forget there’s also Canon’s Speedlite EL-5 which sits sort of in-between the budget EL-10 and pro EL-1, with faster recycle times, a Li-Ion battery, better range of flash head movement and enhanced cooling. It usually costs £499/$499U, though at the time of writing was down to £349/$349which makes it an excellent choice if you need more power than the EL-10, but your budget doesn’t quite stretch to the wallet busting asking price of Canon’s flagship Speedlite EL-1.
You might also like…
Want to know more? Take a look at the best Canon flashguns as well as our top picks of the best photography lighting kits.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
