I have a decision to make. I bought a 580EX Canon Flash, absolutely love it. I want to use it as a Master and buy 2 others for the slaves and mount them a stands at a wedding, banquet, or any other low light functions. However I was told to get the 420 flash as the slaves. Now how different is my lighting going to be, snyc times, refreshing etc... is my question? If something should (LORD forbid) happen to the 580 I would be down to a 540 or a Quantaray 5500 w/softbox which doesn't work well for those types of situations. (studio-does ok) Is getting the 420's a better solution, or should I stick with my first plan of all 580 flashes? (everything being the same) Why would they say use the 420's and only 1-580EX. As it is every time you buy equipment and step out of the store something new comes out. So why should I get a already 2 previous generations? PLEASE HELP!

If you have the money to do so without breaking the bank, there would be no reason to not go the 580 route. If you have the ability to buy the best, why settle for less? And I think it is sound reason that if one of the 580's goes down for the count, you'd have another sitting there ready to serve the same function just as well.

You could see if you could find some old 550s someone is trying to sell on eBay or something.....

That would give you a medium inbetween solution....