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Canon STE2 Speedlite Transmitter for Canon 580EX II, 430EX, 430EX II Speedlites |  | Brand: Canon
Category: Photography
Department: Photo & Video Accessories
List Price: $350.00
Buy New: $218.99
as of 7/28/2010 09:51 CDT details
You Save: $131.01 (37%)
New (15) Used (2) from $190.00
Seller: Audio Video Communication Store
Rating:  44 reviews
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 5 x 3.4 x 2.6
MPN: ST-E2
Model: ST-E2
UPC: 082966581533
EAN: 0082966581533
ASIN: B00004WCFY
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Wireless flash controller for the Canon EX420 and EX550 | | • | Indoor transmission range of approximately 40 to 50 feet | | • | Outdoor transmission range of approximately 26 to 33 feet | | • | 1,500-transmission battery life | | • | Turns off after 90-second idle |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
RE) ST-E2 SPEEDLITE TRANSMITTER
Amazon.com Product Description
The Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2 is compatible with Type A EOS cameras (E-TTL, auto flash) and Type B EOS cameras (manual flash). The ST-E2 is designed to control slaved Canon 550 EX flashes, enabling simultaneous flash use in professional settings. The wireless controller has a flash ratio control, allowing for several different A:B ratios, 1:8 to 8:1 in half-step increments, as well as slave confirmation via a test transmission button, which sets off slave A, followed by slave B, at 1/64 output.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
 Portability for portrait shooting December 6, 2006
S. F. Roney (California)
116 out of 117 found this review helpful
Yes, radio flash with strobes is better, but this item acts similarly to a radio-controlled studio, but with much more portability! No need for wireless transmitters and receivers, as the Canon Speedlites you surely own already accept signals from this thing!
If you need portability with your portraits, this item is for you, since lugging around Speedlights and lightweight stands is easier than heavier strobes with bulkier stands. This makes location shooting much easier.
If you're on a budget, this item is for you, since you won't need to invest in additional strobes and trancievers and power packs. Just combine this with any Speedlites you already own.
If you want a quick and easy backup to your expensive, heavy strobe setup, this is for you, as you're likely to have your Speedlites in your camera bag anyway, and this item takes up about as much room as a Sto-Fen diffuser. You can't go wrong with such a small item enabiling near-full studio capability.
There are only two faults with this item:
-Firstly, you need to be line-of-sight with your Speedlites. Indoors, the Speedlites can be pointed in a relatively correct direction and work. However, outdoors the line-of-sight is critical, with a turn of a few degrees off line causing transmission to fail.
-Speedlites are NOT strobes, and can never match the light output of strobes. You lose continuous modeling light capability and a couple hundred watt seconds of light when you use Speedlites instead of strobes. Don't expect to light massive groups of people or large subjects like trucks with a Speedlite setup.
One oddball curiosity with this item is that if you shoot pets and young children, they get easy distracted by the red blinking panels of the Speedlites in slave mode. I'm sure slave mode users know this. Nothing major, just something to keep in mind as their heads will tend to point toward your light stands during shoots.
UPDATE: Have owned this little device for a while now, and the front red panel broke off about six months into owning it. Still working fine, a little trooper of a device. You can certainly use this device to enable portrait shooting in churches and/or for weddings, as I have used it for that. I've used 430s and 580s on stands through white umbrellas, and the portraits came out fantastic. Things go much easier if you put the flashes into manual mode, so some learning of manual exposure is certainly needed.
Yes: Great for weddings! Largest group of people in a church I've lit with this device's help is 63, which took three speedlites.
A must have item! January 26, 2007
Baron Williams (Milpitas, California United States)
53 out of 53 found this review helpful
Straight on lighting from a camera mounted flash is unnatural and unflattering. The Canon STE2 Speedlite Transmitter is a must have item if you own a compatible Canon Speedlite (580EX/550EX/420EX/430EX). Your subject will really appreciate not having the flash pointing directly into their eyes. Plus, with the right angle, you can cast natural looking shadows that will greatly improve the look of your portrait shots. With this transmitter you can place your Speedlite anywhere you like to get the perfect lighting for the shot. It's a really great system when used with two or more Canon Speedlites. I own two Canon 430EX Speedlites that I use with this transmitter. One flash I use as the main light source is fitted with a unidirectional diffuser to soften the light. The other flash used as a fill flash is fitted with an omni-directional bounce diffuser. This transmitter allows you to easily set the balance of light between two Speedlite groups (group A and group B). You simply press a button on the back to adjust the balance. A lighted meter on the back of the transmitter shows you the balance setting. This allows you to easily balance the light between both flash groups without having to touch or move any of the flash units. Very handy! With this setup, you can create professional portrait shots with ease, and not have to worry about lugging around a bunch of heavy lighting equipment. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT!
Great for portraits. February 24, 2007
Mark A. Foster (Rochester, NY USA)
57 out of 60 found this review helpful
I used the STE2 with two Canon 430EX Speedlites to do some portraits with excellent results. I mounted the Speedlites on stands with 30 inch shoot-through umbrellas using hot shoe multiclamps. I shot with a Canon 50mm f1/4 lens on a Canon 30D set to manual with a 1/60 shutter and f4 aperture. With E-TTL enabled, the flash power is automatically adjusted to obtain the correct exposure. I found the flash power to generally be right on but on the occasion I felt it wasn't, I simply adjusted the flash compensation on my camera. I did not need to meter or use a gray card so I was able to focus more on composition.
I really like the convenience of this wireless setup because there are no cables to trip over and that makes it really easy to move my lights around and try different angles. With a two flash setup, you can easily change the ratio between the two flash units on the back of the transmitter without touching anything else. This often helped me get better shots because I could quickly modify the light setup to capture a moment without stepping out from behind the camera.
I would prefer radio control but this setup is very compact and I did not have any problems with the Speedlites not firing even if they were not quite in direct line of sight. I even turned my shoot-through umbrellas around to act as reflectors, effectively blocking the line of site between the camera and the Speedlites, and they still fired so apparently there is a bit of flexibility in that line of site.
Update 5/25/2007: Although the STE2 worked well for portraits in relatively small rooms, I recently tried to use it for some wedding formals in large churches, reception halls, and outdoors and found it didn't work so well. Even after putting in brand new batteries, I was quite limited on where I could position my flashes so they would still fire. I had to have the flashes in front of me and just off to the sides for it to work. I have since decided to purchase some radio slaves for my wedding work. The other thing I noticed is that if you are shooting a bride in a white dress, E-TTL will tend to underexpose the shot so its value is diminished which makes non-TTL flashes and old-school metering for off camera formal work much more desirable.
Expand your lighting creativity March 18, 2007
Ahamed B. Iqbal
24 out of 24 found this review helpful
First off while the name given by Amazon only lists the 580EX, 550EX and 420EX speedlites, the STE2 transmitter will also work with the 430EX.
I got this transmitter after being inspired by the potential an off camera flash can have after reading Strobist. I got two 430EX flashes to get a very portable and easy to set up lighting system.
The STE2 Transmitter allows you to control an unlimited number of flashes in a few different ways. As long as the visual signal can reach the flashes, they will fire (indoors this is easy because the signal bounces off walls).
The STE2 lets you control the relative flash output between two flashes (or groups of flashes) through a simple control on the back. For example you if you set it to 1:8 between A and B, B will get 8 times the 'power' as A.
Even without two flashes, the STE2 lets you move the flash away from where the lens is and creates more pleasant lighting. Additionally, if you take photos of people with glasses or of objects within glass, you can angle the flash so that glare is eliminated.
All in all a great investment, I doubt I will mount a flash directly to the camera ever again.
Check the tech spec!! December 19, 2006
Trevor Hirst (Merced, CA USA)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
Not much more to add to S.F. Roney's excellent review, except to say that the specialist 2CR2 battery shown as an accessory is in fact an essential extra purchase - clicking on "see more technical details" will tell you that the battery is not included with this item.
This I find rather surprising from a $200 accessory that doesn't run on regular AA cells like the speedlite flash range does.
A small criticism however of an excellent item: the ST-E2 will give you so much more flexibility than the off-camera shoe cord which has a limiting 2' range - not ideal for using with an umbrella!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
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