After seeing a little bit of buzz on the internets and in the strobist community about this flash I finally decided to take the plunge and picked one up on Amazon for $63. The price can’t be beat for a cheap off camera flash with ONLY manual controls and built in optical slave and PC sync port.
To start off, this flash is an almost exact external clone of a Canon 580EX II flash (with some bits from the original 580EX mixed in), but its definitely much cheaper plastic and some of the features are just molded into the plastic. The battery door for example has no locking mechanism like the real 580EX II. The tilt and rotating head also does not have a locking mechanism and what appear to be rubberized buttons are just molded features in the plastic. Having said that, the clicks for each position are pretty positive, but only time will tell if they stay that way. A couple features that are pretty nice are the metal foot and a built in optical slave (wish Canon would put one in any of their flashes). There are two modes for the slave, (S1)triggers on the first flash, and (S2) triggers after a pre-flash on a TTL system. The PC port is pretty standard, but is in the place where the external battery pack screw mount would normally be. It does seem to support the same connector as the Canon CP-E4 battery pack, or YN’s own clone of that. It has the same 14mm pull out diffuser and white catch light bounce card as the 580EX II.
Now to the somewhat unintuitive controls of the flash. The rear panel is just an array of LEDs that serves multiple functions that are explained below.
We’ll start from left to right. The first button is the beep confirmation. You can turn beep confirmation on/off to let you know when the flash is fully recycled and ready for the next shot. However, a long press on the button will turn on/off the power saving standby feature. The red LED underneath the “Pilot” button indicates if the mode is on or off. When the light is on, power saving is “off.” Not quite obvious.
Then you have MODE. Mode cycles between M, S1, S2. M is the only mode where the PC port works. S1 is optical slave that triggers on the first flash. S2 is optical slave triggering after the pre-flash of a TTL system.
The ZOOM +/- buttons control the motorized zooming of the head. This is indicated by the row of LEDs and a Zoom LED (which is always on). The motor is surprisingly quiet.
Now here comes the slightly confusing part. To control the power, you have 4 way navigator buttons with a center button that seems to “exit” from any changes. The zoom scale LEDs are used to indicate the chosen power level with Zoom = 1/128 power and 105 = 1/1 power. The left right buttons control 1/128 to 1/1 power. The up and down buttons control 1/8 STOP (EV) increments (not power level) and are indicated with a blinking LED that also uses the zoom scale. Below is the range of controls:
| Zoom |
24 |
28 |
35 |
50 |
70 |
80 |
105 |
| -3/8 |
-1/4 |
-1/8 |
0 |
+1/8 |
+1/4 |
+3/8 |
+1/2 |
This is definitely a neat feature for very fine control over power output, useful for close up or macro work. The Canon 580EX II has 1/3 (or 1/2 depending on the custom function you choose) STOP increments between power levels.
Finally, the ON/OFF button. You must hold the power button until the LEDs reach from Zoom to 105 for the flash to power on and will beep to confirm its on. It’s a nice feature to prevent accidental power on, but is a bit time consuming if you’re in a hurry. The power off process is basically the opposite of powering on.
Performance: I measured the light output at full 1/1 power at approximately 15 feet 24mm zoom with my Sekonic L-308S light meter. It gave me F6.3 @ ISO 100, which roughly calculates out to a GN of ~94 @ 24mm zoom setting. This is just a bit higher than the rated 91.2 @ 24mm ISO 100. So accounting for my white walls and some stray bouncing light effects, I would say its pretty close. The Canon 580 EX II gave me the exact same reading at the same distance. So its definitely equivalent in power. I did a 5 test fire sequence waiting for the confirmation beep each time and the light meter readings were exactly the same. Now comes the surprising part. The recycle time after a full power test fire was noticeably faster than the 580EX II, almost 2 seconds faster (fully charged Eneloop NiMH batteries). The Canon took about 4 seconds to fully recycle. The confirmation beep from the YN560 was definitely a nice feature, similar to studio strobes or flagship Nikon speedlights.
Build Quality: Overall its not bad. The plastic feels pretty durable, but not as high quality as the Canon. Its got a similar weight with the YN560 at 1 lb 0.4 oz (465g) and the Canon 580EX II at 1 lb 2.5 oz (525g) with 4 Sanyo Eneloop batteries installed.
Final words: This speedlite is a great cheap solution for people that want to get into or expand their off camera lighting capability. On camera, it is much less useful as you have to be knowledgeable enough to change your power settings/aperture on the fly to adjust to changing camera to subject distances. I rarely use my flash on camera, and I have several 580EX’s for the purpose. The downside is that there are quite a few negative reviews on reliability and quality control. No doubt due to the super low price and coming straight from the factory in China. If you are depending on your speedlites for making a living, it would be wiser to purchase some older used Nikon speedlights (SB-24/26/28) to use off camera for around $100-$150. If you want a warranty get a LumoPro LP160 that has all the manual controls with optical slave, 1/8” mini phone, and PC sync connections and is designed with input from and recommended by David Hobby (Strobist) himself.
If you’re interested in how the above images were shot, see the setup below. I used a Nikon SB-28 @ 1/1 power with Honl 1/8” grid bounced off the wall camera left and a flag to block spill onto the black paper background. The YN560 was used to light itself, bounced into a silver reflector clamped to the lightstand @ 1/64 power zoomed to 105mm. A flag (cardboard box) was used to keep the reflector light from spilling onto the background.
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