I started a four day testing odyssey today. During Christmas vacation I tried on several occasions to take some good flash photos. In a word, they were pretty crappy. The main problem was underexposure. I shoot a Canon 580EX and 580 EX II flash, which is about as good as you can get with Canon equipment. I pulled out an article I had read earlier and started to go through it again. This is the article: http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/ which is well worth reading. I went out to the office at the airport and sat at my desk and fooled with settings for about an hour and realized there was more to it than I had thought. This article goes into great depth and I had a hard time going through it and remembering all that was there. Another day of testing was definitely in order, and I needed to be much better at my experimental design. This is a kite of Bloke's that adorns the corner over his desk. I thought it had nice colors.