Marcin Milewski

Metz 48 AF-1 Digital

Many times I was wondering about to buy an external flashgun for my Nikon D80. I just had an opportunity and I have chosen brand new Metz Megablitz 48 AF-1 Digital. I received it yesterday and I’m very impressed.

Basic specs:

• GN: 48 for ISO100 and 105mm
• Head Tilt from -7 to +90
• Head Swivel: 180 left, 120 right
• zoom: 24 – 105mm
• Integrated diffuser for 18mm
• Integrated bounce reflector card
• Supported modes:
  • iTTL
  • iTTL BL
  • M
  • Nikon CLS – Slave

First impression is amazing. Maybe because this is my first “professional” external flashgun. It works with Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries – charges itself quickly and silently. It recognize lens actual focal setting and changes the angle of flash according to it. We have also flash bracketing and modelling light, which is 3 sec burst flash mimicking continuous light. We can turn modelling light on by pressing button on the lamp or pressing depth of field preview button on D80. Like I mention above, Metz 48 AF-1 support Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) and working only in slave mode. It means that we can only command it by D80 build-in flashgun set in commander mode, or by for example Nikon flashguns SB800, SB900, Metz Megablitz 58 AF-1, or Nikon commander unit SU-800.

There are two samples using this flashgun. Images are not fantastic, because they are made only to show how the flashgun operate:

iTTL BL mode:

CLS slave mode: