Recently bought this speedlite and I will be posting a full review shortly. Does anyone else have recent experience of Metz speedlites dedicated to Canon?
Gary
Gary
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Re: Metz Mecablitz 52 AF-1
Here's my early hands-on review:
Metz Mecablitz 52 AF-1 (Canon ETTL fit) review
Metz have been a manufacturer of high quality flashguns for decades. The market has changed and hammerhead, off-camera flashes are not as popular as they once were. The job of third-party manufacturers such as Metz, Nissin, Vivitar and Sunpak to produce hot-shoe mounted speedlites to compete with the marque brands (e.g. Canon, Nikon) is more difficult with increasing sophistication and dedication is a challenge. But Metz have persevered with their high reputation and feature set to carve out a niche for themselves in the modern, all-digital world.
This flashgun is made in Germany and you know you are getting German build-quality and £200-worth of flashgun when you unpack the box. The 52 AF-1 is a high quality item, very well made with tight tolerances and a general quality feel to it. The only immediate ergonomic disadvantage apparent compared to Canon is that the Metz has an old-fashioned locking wheel set-up whereas Canons now have the lock slide and rubberised waterproof collar. The 52 AF-1 is solid, weighty and compact and sits, in terms of size and power output, somewhere between Canon’s 430EX and 600EX speedlites. Tilt and swivel head operation is positive and smooth with no ‘drift’. Full 90 degree bounce and 360 degree swivel is possible. A wide angle diffuser and pull out bounce board are included and located next the flash head. Four AA batteries are needed for power and fit into a very tight battery compartment on the side, which has a somewhat fussy sliding cover.
The menu system just uses three hard buttons on the back – the rest is menu driven by a touch screen LCD display, which changes from portrait to landscape orientation as you move the flash gun through 90 degrees – i.e. vertical to horizontal. This makes reading the display easy. The touch sensitivity is fair but not quite as smooth and seamless as an iPhone or the touchscreen display LCD of some EOS cameras. You have a standard feature set that you would expect from a modern ETTL / ATTL speedlite: master or slave flash function; ETTL, manual and strobe mode; auto zoom; flash exposure compensation; flash range indication; fill flash; high speed sync; display adjustments (e.g. brightness, contrast) though there are no custom functions as such.
Metz has designed this camera well and it works surprisingly interactively with the camera menu (I tested it with an EOS 70D). Quite a lot of the speedlites functions can be controlled from the camera, as if it were a ‘Canon’ speedlite. It sees most of the speedlite functions as ‘custom functions’ and you can toggle them accordingly – power save, mode, high speed / second curtain sync, etc. And main ETTL functions can be changed by a direct menu item under the flash menu.
First experiments with flash exposure were very favourable, with highly accurate exposures. Bounce and fill flash worked very well indeed and it was indistinguishable from the 430EX2 in that sense. That is commendable and this gives a fine alternative to the Canon marque speedlites. The touch screen menu works well and the speedlite is a complex or as simple as you want it to be.
I am undertaking a long term test and will report back soon, re: wireless and multiple flash set-ups.
So far, highly recommended…..
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