Hey All,During the day I shoot on a DSLR and love it. In the evenings, it is just too much to lug around so I take a small point and shoot. I currently is a Pan. FX-7 and am not very happy with the performance of the camera (plus it crapped out on me in the middle of China). 99.99999% of the time I use the pee-wee camera in low/lower light "out on the town" situations. I know this is a loaded question, but is there a ultra compact camera out there with a good flash and good low-light focusing? I have read most of teh reviews and am not encouraged. All that matters to me is size, and low-light performance.Any thought?Thanks in advance for your help.

dcislander-

Perhaps a more inexpensive solution might be to use a slave flash with the FX-7. Let the "peanut flash", as you call it, be your trigger for the slave flash. I use one all the time, and have been alble to extend the flash range on my Olympus C-8080 out to 25 feet. Slave flashes are quite small ( the one shown in the attached photo is just 2 inches by 3 and one quarter inches) and it is very easy to use. Perhaps it is worth a thought. The slave flash illustrated cost around $50. There are many posts in the External Flash folder that discuss slave flashes in quite a bit of detail.

Sarah Joyce

Sony makes an auxiliary slave flash for the P-200 which is integrated well with the P-200 body adding only a bit of length to the assembly leaving it still quite pocketable.

Lucky-

Yes, I am very aware of Sony's offering. I own one. However, it very under powered and over priced. It is surely not worth the money. When you realize that you can purchase a slave flash unit that works just like the Sony Flash, is the same size, and has 3 times the power or output and costs 1/2 the selling price of the Sony flash, you begin to correct your buying practices.

Sarah Joyce

dcislander-

What about using a slave flash seems difficult to you? It would giveyour FX-7 steroids! You could get the photos that you really want. The set-up is ultra simple. You can either hand hold the slave flash or mount it on a bracket like the one shown on the attached photo.

Would you like to discuss it a bit more?

Sarah Joyce

The reason I recommended the P-200 with auxiliary slave flash is because it remains pocketable, and dcislander said that size does matter. I like the setup you pictured of the HP camera, Olympus bracket, and Bower flash; however, it seems to me that its size would remove it from consideration by dcislander.

lucky2505-

I have purposefully shown different cameras with this set up because a slave flash can be used with ANY digital camera. I just put the setup together using equipment that I had on hand. A lot of times I shoot with my right hand and simply extend the slave flash in my left hand, it is that small (2" X 3.25"). As long as the digital camera of your choice has a built-in flash, which triggers the slave flash, the make or model of the digital camera does not matter at all.

Sarah Joyce