[TV Man]

Hi,

I have a client that needs some employee photos taken for their website. I have been using an old Olympus 5050 that just died. The Olympus allowed me to use an external flash attached to the hot shoe on the camera as a bounce flash while using the built in camera flash as a fill. This yielded really nice results without a lot of hassle.

I'm thinking about replacing the Oly with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, but remember reading somewhere that it doesn't allow use of a flash on the hot shoe with the on board flash as a fill flash. Does anyone here know about his? I've been using Google to try to find out for sure, but can't find anything concrete.

Any input is appreciated... Thanks.

[msteindler]

As far as I know, the construction of the Rebel or that of any other SLR with a flash built onto the pentaprism will not allow you to do what you want.
When the built-in flash module pops up, it prevents the installation of an external flash unit.
See-http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos400d/page6.asp
The only way that I'm aware of providing both direct and bounce light from a flash mounted in the hot shoe would be to use one of the Metz units or another of similar dual flash tube design or to use an attachment like-
http://store.garyfonginc.com/liiido.html
I use the Fong unit all the time for my event work and it provides a beautiful light on the subject, and allows one to eliminate or at least minimize the shadows behind the subject. This does come at the price of substancial reduction in light output, however.

[TV Man]

Thanks for the excellent advice. The Rebel XTi with a 430ex flash mated with the Fong diffusor should be just the ticket. One thing I'm wondering about is how much light you lose using the Fong and will the camera adjust exposure to compensate?

Thanks,