I can't say enough great things about the Canon Speedlite external flash. I'm learning to use this handy gadget on my 7D and what a difference it can make when capturing my kiddo's. For those of you more experienced with photography, this will come as no surprise I'm sure, but this girl seems to learn something new literally every day and when it comes to flash photography, my lack of understanding has kept me far away from experimenting with it. The below photo's are completely undedited - right off the camera so you can see the difference with a flash as opposed to with out.
The first photo is taken with just a natural light source. Looking at the pic you can see that the light source is from the right, where a window is located, causing shadows to fall on the pillows to the left of my #3 child's face...
After positioning my external flash to angle slightly to my left (from my vantage point behind the camera), I was able to counter the shadows without over exposing my little guys face.
My less-than-willing model had difficulty sitting still and tried to pretend I wasn't there. Such a shame considering how cute he is - I could take a hundred pictures of him!
