you could get a way with a canon 43o EX II, with a good soft box, (lastolite micro apollo 45). the soft box will help kill the harsh flash light. if you wanted to go all out you could get a set of pocket wizards to go with it and run a remote flash system, this would give you the best lighting, but its not cheep, flash soft box pocket wizards you would be up for well over 1Kand get your self a Canon 50mm 1.8 that will increase you shutter speed, and there cheep around $250 or lesstry taking the photo from another angle so the light from the flash is reflected away from the camera and not bounc