Canon guy speaks truth! News at 11. the SB-600 is a good speedlight to start with. :thumbup:
Strobed (flash) light looks best if it comes from somewhere off the longitudinal (long) axis of the lens, or somewhere other than the camera's hot shoe.
Also with practice, it's not to hard to manually adjust a speedlight.
The SB-600 can be adjusted from full power down to 1/64th power and when mounted on the hot shoe can be used in automated modes that certainly light a scene, fill or other wise, just in a way that is kind of flat and not real artistic.
There are less expensive speedlights that are less expensive because they
can't communicate with the camera to do the automatic stuff. Plus some of them can't be manually adjusted in as wide a range of power settings.
Most of us that use strobed light a lot use everything in manual anyway so we have total control of the light in a scene we are shooting. (cameras aren't very artisticly inclined all by themselves.)
But, I have a SB-600, and a SB-800 (replaced by the SB-900), and 6 Vivitar 285HV's.
Visit
Strobist: Lighting 101 and start learning about OCF (Off-Camera-Flash).