OCF on a budget

Pookeyhead

Pookeyhead

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A student of mine has just bought 2 of these...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Neewer-NW...122821?hash=item487bc48845:g:OFoAAOSwBahU~sCr


...and they're brilliant!

Works every bit as well as Nikon SBxxx when using the Nikon CLS triggering system. iTTL is perfect... guide No. of 58.

Seriously... even if it breaks after 12 months, it's still worth a punt.

It may well be electronically unsafe... and kill you one day... but hey!... what's life without risk? :)
 
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Been looking at these for a while. Also been considering the 'Shanny SN600SN' but i guess they're all of a similar quality/design.

I think you have installed enough confidence in them for me to pick a couple up.

Thanks!
 
Can't go wrong at this price can you? Most of us would spend that on a meal in a restaurant and not bat an eyelid.
 
Need to off load all my Yongnuo Kit first.....
 
Sorry thinking aloud, nothing doing with the Neewer speedlites..:(
 
Phil789 said:
I just got a Shanny SN600N - highly recommended. Can't believe it was only £48!
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Unless you're extremely unlucky (no effective guarantee) you simply can't go wrong at these prices.

The situation is that Yongnuo has tried to grow too quickly by creating demand by selling at silly cheap prices, they have met demand by contracting out production to a number of other factories, they have saturated the market and so sales have crashed. Because of this the firms that they have contracted out to are now in trouble and have massive over-capacity, and their answer to this is to re-brand with their own name and to dump them (sell at less than cost price) just to keep their factories running.

So, if it fails quickly then you will have lost your money but if it doesn't, you've got a decent product at a very good price.
 
I think I'll grab a couple of these. I've always bought cheap manual flashes for location work simply because I've had too many flashes with modifiers go for a burton to risk a £500 SB unit.
 
Hmm. Tempting! I used to have a couple of speed lights for use with gels....worth a punt at this price.
 
Sir SR said:
Hmm. Tempting! I used to have a couple of speed lights for use with gels....worth a punt at this price.
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These mean that you can use CLS on location with multiple flashes for no money at all.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Unless you're extremely unlucky (no effective guarantee) you simply can't go wrong at these prices.

The situation is that Yongnuo has tried to grow too quickly by creating demand by selling at silly cheap prices, they have met demand by contracting out production to a number of other factories, they have saturated the market and so sales have crashed. Because of this the firms that they have contracted out to are now in trouble and have massive over-capacity, and their answer to this is to re-brand with their own name and to dump them (sell at less than cost price) just to keep their factories running.

So, if it fails quickly then you will have lost your money but if it doesn't, you've got a decent product at a very good price.
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Interesting explanation! More generally, it explains why you can sometimes find ridiculously cheap products of other kinds, so cheap it's worth buying them just on a gamble, and which turn out to be really very good, often apparently identical to some expensive branded product, but cheaply packaged without instructions etc..
 
Ultra-cheap flash also makes ganging multiple guns together an affordable proposition - to boost power in bright daylight, or in high-speed sync mode.

I've posted this link a few times. It's sports photographer Dave Black using eight speedlights in a custom rig (at about 2:30 mins).

In 2010, this outfit cost several thousand quid, now you could do it for a few hundred. He gets some great results using HHS (examples at the end) though in a lot of situations you would be okay with four rather than eight guns. As a very rough guide, generally speaking four guns in HSS mode will give roughly the same effective brightness as one gun in normal sync mode.

Edit: David's link is to the Nikon version. There are also Canon versions available if you search - Neewer NW-985C.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDAINwhTWU
 
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HoppyUK said:
Ultra-cheap flash also makes ganging multiple guns together an affordable proposition - to boost power in bright daylight, or in high-speed sync mode.

I've posted this link a few times. It's sports photographer Dave Black using eight speedlights in a custom rig (at about 2:30 mins).

In 2010, this outfit cost several thousand quid, now you could do it for a few hundred. He gets some great results using HHS (examples at the end) though in a lot of situations you would be okay with four rather than eight guns. As a very rough guide, generally speaking four guns in HSS mode will give roughly the same effective brightness as one gun in normal sync mode.

Edit: David's link is to the Nikon version. There are also Canon versions available if you search - Neewer NW-985C.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDAINwhTWU
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I'm really new to CLS and wondered if you could gang the lights. How do you tell the camera they're all there as keys?
 
The23rdman said:
I'm really new to CLS and wondered if you could gang the lights. How do you tell the camera they're all there as keys?
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I don't do Nikon, but w Canon you'd put them in the same group.
 
Phil V said:
I don't do Nikon, but w Canon you'd put them in the same group.
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That makes sense. I've only been playing around with it for a couple of days, but can see the benefit for dof control and shooting in sunlight.
 
The23rdman said:
I'm really new to CLS and wondered if you could gang the lights. How do you tell the camera they're all there as keys?
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For off-camera flash, especially outdoors, you really need radio triggers. Easiest way is with separate triggers for each gun though there are workarounds (bit of faffing). You can have as many as you like then in each group, the camera doesn't care, nor the flash either. This is really a triggering question, and in this case, a Nikon-specific triggering question as there are some detail operational differences. YN-622 looks like the obvious answer, though I'm not a Nikon user.
 
HoppyUK said:
For off-camera flash, especially outdoors, you really need radio triggers. Easiest way is with separate triggers for each gun though there are workarounds (bit of faffing). You can have as many as you like then in each group, the camera doesn't care, nor the flash either. This is really a triggering question, and in this case, a Nikon-specific triggering question as there are some detail operational differences. YN-622 looks like the obvious answer, though I'm not a Nikon user.
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Richard, I've been using manual flash and triggers for years, but never TTL. Are YN-622s TTL triggers?
 
What's the advantage of these over just using the pop-up or an on camera speedlight? I just want to experiment on a tight budget.
 
Okay, Google did the job. It removes the line of site issue by converting your signal to radio waves. Very handy.
 
The23rdman said:
Okay, Google did the job. It removes the line of site issue by converting your signal to radio waves. Very handy.
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Pretty much essential for reliable working in daylight, or even working at all in bright sun.
 
The23rdman said:
What's the advantage of these over just using the pop-up or an on camera speedlight? I just want to experiment on a tight budget.
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Also, with the TX controller, you leave the flashes in TTL, but can control them manually from the TX controller, so can either transmit using TTL, or manually adjust exposure and zoom, from the controller on the camera.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Also, with the TX controller, you leave the flashes in TTL, but can control them manually from the TX controller, so can either transmit using TTL, or manually adjust exposure and zoom, from the controller on the camera.
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Cool.
 
I have a few sheets of coloured stuff that @Denyerec sent me a while back.

Initial thoughts are it's ok. Seems to be easy enough to work. The manual is in Chinglish though so some of it takes a while to work out what it's going on about. Not done any proper shots yet though.
 
minnnt said:
I have a few sheets of coloured stuff that @Denyerec sent me a while back.

Initial thoughts are it's ok. Seems to be easy enough to work. The manual is in Chinglish though so some of it takes a while to work out what it's going on about. Not done any proper shots yet though.
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So, what are your thoughts so far, mate?
 
Only had a quick blast with it mate but it seems to do everything i expected it to. (TTL)

Seems to be made well enough but then again I've never owned an OEM flash. I've had Mieke and Yongnuo and it's of a similar grade imo.

Will try and give it more of a run out this weekend and get back to you. Quite happy for £40 though.
 
Good stuff. As long as the output is consistent I'm in.
 
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