Some reasons to add an external flash to your list of equipment

External flashes are not cheap but they really add a lot to your ability to get great pictures. The external flash is much stronger, delivering much more power and range by several times over the on board flash. You now have increased the options for lighting your subject properly greatly by giving you many more ways to light up your subject. With the D7000 and many other Nikon cameras you can use the on board flash by itself, you can use the external flash by itself or use a combination of both. The extra flash can be mounted on the camera or placed away from the camera and controlled wirelessly by the on camera flash and camera settings, when it is placed in COMMANDER MODE found in the settings within your menus. (This is one of the things I suggest adding to the "MY MENU" in your camera so it can be accessed easily). I told you how this is done in post #5 of this thread. You can also actually adjust the power of a remote wireless flash through the camera menus without touching the flash itself. The external flash allows you to bounce the flash off of wall and ceilings or anything else for that matter. By placing the flash further from the lens you can also drastically cut down or eliminate that annoying red eye that you get in pictures when using a flash. Another thing you can do with the EF is use gels on the flash to help correct white balance or to get different effects with your lighting. The strong flash also gives you a much greater ability to use fill flash when shooting outside. This might sound like a strange statement but you might find that the more light you have effecting your image the more a flash, or FILL FLASH, will be needed to help eliminate all the little shadows created by the existing light sources especially strong sunlight.

Have you ever taken a picture with the on board flash and found that you had a round shadow on the bottom of your pictures? Well if you have a wide lens, longer lens or a sunshade on you lens when taking picture using the on board flash, this is caused by the flash hitting the top front edge of one of these throwing a shadow on your picture. The strange thing is that depending on where you have your lens zoomed to it may cause a shadow on some pictures and not others. Whether the shadow shows up or not depends on if the lens or lens shade got in the line of the light from the flash to your subject or not. An external flash usually will eliminate this problem in most cases.

It also allows you to bounce the flash off walls or ceilings to help improve your lighting and also eliminate the irritating red eye in your photos. Having a second flash will expand your options when needing extra light. Instead of having just the one option of the straight on harsh lighting that the on camera flash provides, you can now bounce the light from your flash off of the ceiling or walls.

In the Nikon system if you place the camera and external flash in TTL mode, (Through the lens mode} it will adjust you lighting automatically whether it is on or off the camera. I would suggest getting one because it will open up a whole world of new opportunities in addition to the ones you already have, Jeff