YN flash range: your opinion

Sebastian

Sebastian

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Sebastian
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Hi,

I am just looking at YN flashes on eBay: from YN-460 to YN-560.
I will be buying few of these little gems.
But before I will...

I have few questions:

How do you rate the quality of this unit? I love the feature for this price. Just want to make sure it won't fall apart in my hands :)

Have you tried the models in between? YN-462, 467? are these just 460 with 1 or 2 more options?

Let me know what you think! Thanks,

Sebastian
 
I have two YN flash units, the YN460-II and the YN465. The 465 was the first Canon ETTL flash unit that they made and my thinking was to get the 465 and use it as a master and set the 460-II up as slave, which worked fine. But as i soon discovered i never use ETTL so have no use for it other than a master. Unfortunately the 465 has started to malfunction and misfire, especially when accessing and changing the functions from the camera menu, which is fine because i hardly ever use it on-cam anyway and use a wireless trigger.

The YN-460-II has so far been 100% reliable on and off-camera, it has a very fine-tunable power rating (1/3 stop increments) and a good range at full power, so thumbs up for that one.

build quality wise they are very solid and for that price i'm not worried about the odd scuff or bit of dirt. The 465 i would not buy again, especially if i were looking to use the ETTL. The 460-II is a bargain in my eyes if manual flash is your thing, only downside is you can't have two or three and use one as master, they only act as slave.

hope that helps
 
Thank your comment, it only maid me more confident about buying 460 - great little flash!
 
I have a YN465 (Nikon). As I don't use it on the camera and got it for a bargain vs paying a premium for a Canon version

It hasn't missed a beat and seems pretty solid.

Considerably cheaper than main brand flashes so if one crashes off a light stand I won't be too worried
 
I think they're great too. Well enough built and for location work they're so cheap to replace if you have an accident.
 
Thanks for your input guys.

I am just thinking what to do:

4 x 460/460-II or 4 x 560

Hm...
 
I have the YN-560 and it has a great build quality and all the features I need. A bit less power than the YN-460 II on paper (not sure about real world, people have posted conflicting results) but if you're looking for maximum range consider that it has a fresnel zoom (motor driven but manually set) so you control the spread of the light better.

Only gripe is the "#%"! flash "test" button which is very very hard to press. Takes me both thumbs and excessive force to trigger it. Of course I usually never ever have to do that as I can just use the RF-602 trigger.

I don't get the comment about them working as a "master".. they have an optical slave so of course you can use them as an optical master.. but you can also use your camera's onboard flash for that? Am I missing something?
 
Well, with D3 you don't have onboard flash. $£%^&*( camera ;):P
 
cheap cheerful and good, I've found myself using wireless ttl a lot recently so am unlikely to buy any more YNs as they lack the flexibility of canon units
 
bomberman said:
The 460-II is a bargain in my eyes if manual flash is your thing, only downside is you can't have two or three and use one as master, they only act as slave.

hope that helps
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean here :thinking:
I have two 460 II and have used one as a master and one as a slave .
Do you mean that you can't use one as a TTL master .
Back to my view on the units . They are very good for the money and a nice cheap way of getting your first taste of flash use .
 
Thanks guys, I appreciate your help.
Now I need to decide which ones to buy: 460-II 0r 560.

So far 560 wins hands down. I was reading about some problems with quality (more features = more thing can go wrong) but I will take my chances
 
BigJohn said:
I'm not sure what you mean here :thinking:
I have two 460 II and have used one as a master and one as a slave .
Do you mean that you can't use one as a TTL master .
Back to my view on the units . They are very good for the money and a nice cheap way of getting your first taste of flash use .
Click to expand...

what we generally call slave flashes are ttl slaves ;)
 
I initially bought a YN 460-II and thought it was fantastic for the money... I use it with RF-602 Radio Triggers and it is very reliable.

I subsequently bought a YN 560 which is slightly larger, more powerful (it definately is despite what you may have read). This has the added benefit of a zoom control in the head, faster recharge time with flash ready beep just in case you cant see the red/green LED on the back, and has more accurate adjustment controls.

I love both of these flashes, and use them regularly for off camera work, along with 2 jessops flashes which are pretty useless in comparison (generally only used for lighting backgrounds).

I would highly reccomend these flashes, and they oth operate as optical masters and slaves, and the 560 even has a function where you can set it to ignore preflash which is handy. I use them with a softbox and umbrellas with the cheap konig stands... a great beginner strobist kit!!!

Definately the 560 for me!!!

The reports about the 460-II being more powerful is innacurate because it was beleived that at full power, the 460-II was twice as powerful as at half power (which it should be), but in reality it is almost the same... On the 560 it is more accurate and more powerful... I have tested both at full power and the 560 is better!!
 
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