I love having a nice off-camera flash, but like so many other modern accessories it requires some care and feeding. Usually more feeding than care. This is especially true with this particular unit, which seems to have developed some kind of power leak. Just leaving the batteries installed while the unit is turned off will result in dead batteries by the next day. (I suspect the focus-assist is frozen on.) Having rechargeable batteries has helped with the expenses, but it doesn’t help when I pull out the gear at 11:30pm for the “daily photo” and find the batteries installed and completely drained. So, instead of whatever it was I had planned that night, here is my 550EX flash unit with the batter compartment open, shot under crappy low ambient lighting from the ceiling lights.