Metz Speedlights

Icebear

What am I missing? Why would someone spend the money for Nikon compatible Metz speedlights when superior functionality and power can be had from Nikon (say SB700) for similar money? Am I just reading specs wrong?

MarkR

Not sure about Nikon-- but in Pentaxland the Metzs are very well regarded and often considered superior to the Pentax branded flashes both in build quality and features-- which, to be fair, are getting rather long in the tooth.

I do have a Metz 58-AF 2. Aside from the annoyance of a menu-based control system, it is very full featured: multiple modes including auto-thyristor, power down to 1/256, dual flash, strobe modes, etc.

ziggy53

The only negative I've read about the Metz automation is that they don't provide a true Nikon i-TTL emulation; i.e. they cannot coordinate distance information from the camera's AF system into the flash output calculations. This seems to result in some additional flash output error, but the error is fairly limited to the situations of direct flash and difficult foregrounds and backgrounds.

For a common instance, a Nikon speedlight generally seems to do better in an outdoor situation with direct fill light and using a lens which provides distance information on a modern body, and where the background is some distance from the subject. In this case a Nikon speedlight uses i-TTL and distance data, along with the lens f-setting, to calculate the appropriate flash output for the subject, while the Metz units seem to rely more upon simple TTL and the particular camera metering mode, which can place undue emphasis on the background/foreground elements of the shot, at the expense of the flash illumination of the subject.

For anything other than direct flash, like if you use bounced flash or flash with a flash modifier, they work fine. (Those techniques don't use i-TTL.)

In other regards, like build quality and durability, the Metz are generally better rated than manufacturer flashes. (They are built like a tank.)