General Full-Frame Flash for Canon R-Series

Hmm, a wide ranging question. Flashes are complicated.

I use my old Canon 580EX with the R7 and it works great. I use it with a diffuser as my preferred rig for handheld closeup photography. Once in a while I use a Godox TT685 and it works fine too. However, in TTL mode with a fixed ISO, it doesn't expose correctly when shooting at close range. Switch it to M and it works fine.

I have some Godox studio lights too that I fire with the XPro trigger, usually using the R5. Works well. It fires the TT685 too, but it times out after many minutes and one has to pay attention to that.

While I don't use it a lot, my Speedlite 430EXIII-RT works fine for me.

The EL-5 is a native Multifunction Shoe (MFS) flash and the R7 has the MFS. Not only is the AD-E1 unnecessary, using it would prevent the flash from working, as the AD-E1 does not have MF contacts on top. It is for adapting 5-pin accessories to cameras with the MFS. It's not even needed in all cases, because the R7 (like some others) has both the MF contacts and the 5-pin contacts in its shoe. I am using my 5-pin 430EXii directly on the R7 without issues.

Been using my Canon 580 EX II on my R6 Mkii, with no issues. Can be picked up used for a very reasonable price.

I know this isn't an Apples to Apples comparison, but my Godox TT350C works on my R6 Mark II. And that includes TTL. I bought the AD_E1 before I bought the flash thinking I would need it but I don't. As long as the flash has the same pin arrangement as the camera, you should be fine. The MFS on the camera's shoe mount isn't a factor for this setup.

There's a lot of bad info floating around regarding the AD-E1.

It exists to adapt older accessories (nearly always flashes) to cameras having the multifunction shoe. There are two ways that this adaptation happens.

1) the electrical contacts. Older accessories use the 5-pin layout, or more accurately the universal center pin plus the four Canon-specific data pins. The AD-E1 has the 5-pin shoe on top (with only the 5 contacts) and the MFS shoe on the bottom (with only the MFS contacts). If you put a MFS flash onto an AD-E1 its MFS contacts will not touch the 5 contacts that are there. Likewise, if you put the AD-E1 on a camera lacking the MFS pins, it won't make electrical connection there either. It may not even go on all the way. Electrically speaking it only works with a 5-pin accessory and an MFS camera. Fortunately some of the newer cameras like the R7 have both the 5-pin layout AND the MFS contacts, so you can use either style of flash. Flashes are one or the other; there are no accessories with both types.

2) weather sealing. The bulge on the camera body around the hotshoe is slightly more bulbous with the MFS, protruding forward where the MFS contacts are buried at the front edge of the shoe. The weather sealing gasket of flashes like the 580EX and 600EX is shaped to fit a different profile. Using the AD-E1, the flash will seal properly against the adapter which in turn will seal properly against the camera. In the process, the flash will talk to the camera over the MFS contacts instead of over the 5-pin contacts, but it would work fine using the 5 contacts (if available) instead. People generally find that the weather sealed flashes will fit directly onto a MFS, although the gasket might be squooshed more.

As far as I know, only the R50 has the MFS without the 5 legacy contacts, so for that one you absolutely need the AD-E1 with a 5-pin flash.

The switch happened in late 2021. The cameras and flashes before that (R, RP, R5, R6, EL-100, EL-1) were all 5-pin only. Starting with the release of the R3, you got the MFS contacts in addition to the 5 pins (R3, R7, R10, R5c, R6ii, R8) and then the R50 without the 5-pins, and accessories were all MFS-only (ST-E10, DM-E1D, EL-5, OC-E4A). Then, last summer, Canon released the R100 with just the 5 pins again so who knows what the heck they were thinking.

I use Westcott with the R5 and it is rock solid. It can also be configured for other cameras besides Canon.