My generic Quantaray flash broke recently (read below for how), so I upgraded to a Canon Speedlite 580EX II. Some would argue without a 'beamer' extension that these flashes would be of limited use to a bird photographer: the Canon has a zoom of 110mm and the Quantaray of 80mm.

I was actually happy with the Quantaray Flash, because the older model cost under $100 and allowed me to shoot in manual mode at 1/200, and that was usually a fast enough shutter speed to get the results I wanted. I had six settings for overexposing or underexposing the shot. Many of my hummingbird photos were taken this way. A newer Quantaray Flash, the Sunpak PZ40X Power Zoom Digital Flash, is about 1/2 the price of the Canon Speedlite 580EX II, and has a number of new features.

Ok, this article is not finished, check Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash for Canon for more info. The most important feature is that the Canon flash allows shooting at any shutter speed, in High-Speed Sync mode, called 'fill flash', so photographing penguins or puffins in the sunlight is possible. The flash is used for filling in the shadows and blacks; without it you can't get proper exposure on both the whites and blacks. The Canon unit is also more solidly constructed than the Quantaray unit, and for people like me who carry their camera hiking, this does matter. It is easy to bump the flash and have it break at the plastic shoe mount connector.

There are advanced features if the 580EX II I will describe later.