Flash Help!!!

[conley916]

New member here, I have a Canon 7D and mainly shoot automotive photography. I am looking to get into buying a flash (or two) but have no clue where to start. I want them to be off camera fired flashes, so do I need pocket wizards? or is there an alternative? I was looking at the Speedlite 430EXii's but also dont know if those are going to be what im looking for or not. If someone could help me out a little I would greatly appreciate it, thank you!

[MikeSowsun]

The 7D has the ability to use the pop-up flash as a Master to fire a Slave like a 430EX II or any other flash that is compatible with the Canon optical wireless system.

I would start with buying 1 (or two) 430EX II's and go from there.  

If you find the Canon optical wireless system unreliable in bright outdoor locations I would recommend the Yongnuo YN-622C tranceivers. They are radio wireless triggers and receivers that work very well and are also not very expensive. 

[TCampbell]

Though a single off-camer flash is a good start, a car is large, and light "falls off" based on distance from the flash.  That means the part of the car closest to the flash will be brighter than the parts that are farther away, and this fall-off can be extremely noticeable (the farther the flash, the greater the distance required to get the same degree of fall-off.)  

But this means usually there's more than one light involved.

Here's a video, showing lighting for one car and what they did to light it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w638djAPyA

(although I noticed Blair pronounces the name of the flash to sound like "shimerea" ("sh" sound), but the name is from greek mythology (it's a monster) and is pronounced with a hard c (like  "k" sound) and it's "chi" (rhymes with "tie") "mera".)