Yongnou 560 II Speedlight review

The Yongnou 560II speedlight is said to be just as powerful as the Nikon sb910 and canon 580 exII while costing less than $100 ! lets see what it can do. All the photos in this review were lit using a Yongnou 560 II speedlight fired wirelessly via my popup flash in commander mode.

Note: The Youngnou 560 II is a Manual flash ONLY. It has no TTL or automatic modes.

Features

• 1/1 to 1/128 power in whole, half or third stop increments.
• Built in slave for optical wirless triggering.  plus Advanced S2 mode enables the speedlight to ignore the preflash.
• Multimode for stroboscopic type effects.
• Guide # of 58 at ISO 100
• Manual Zoom capability from 24-105mm plus built in wide angle adapter and bounce card.
• Baclit LCD panel.
• built in PC port.
• 3 second recycle time (at full power).
• Optional battery back port.
• Head swivels up to 180 degrees to the left and 90 degrees to the right.

Interface

              The Yongnou 560 II was very easy to use right out of the box, the large clear display shows the power in a large clear readout, when u press a button the orange lcd backlight turns on for a few seconds.

           Functions and buttons are clearly labeled and very intuitive, one small caveat for me is that to turn the flash on and off you have to hold down the power button for 2 seconds as opposed to it switching on instantly.
Manual  Power can be adjusted all the way from 1/1 down to 1/128 using the 4 multi selector buttons. To adjust in full stop increments (ex: 1/4, 1/2, 1/1,) press the left and right buttons. to adjust in 1/3 stops hit the up and down buttons. one cool thing i like is that the flash remembers what power you chose for each mode so if u were using M mode and then you switched to S1 mode, the power will adjust to what u previously set on S1 mode, this may be annoying for some but i like it.

If u press the up or down buttons twice the readout will display +0.5. Power can be adjusted all the way from 1/1 down to 1/128.



Modes: The flash has 4 modes. Press the mode button to scroll through the different mode

M mode: For on camera use and for triggering with radio transmitters
S1 mode: For triggering optically the Youngnou 560 II has a built in optical slave, when incorporated in a standard studio setup (with no ttl or preflashes)
S2 mode: For triggering via standard popup flash, TTL flash or CLS use S2 mode, this tells the speedlight to ignore the preflash so that it fires during the exposure

MULTI mode: allows u to program the flash to fire multiple times during the exposure. not much real world use but a cool feature to play around with.
 

In Use

      the plastic construction feels pretty solid not cheap and garbagey like you might expect from such a cheap unit. it has a metal foot and a ring style locking mechanism, there are no buttons to press to rotate and bend the head simply give it a firm push to move it, it will click when it reaches the different angles. i was happily surprised to find that i can incorporate it as an additional off camera manual flash in a Nikon Commander setup using S2 mode. The color temperature is a bit cooler than Nikon speedlights so u might want to use cloudy white balance rather than flash WB or 6000k. I recently did a product shoot with it, after over 100 "pops" at full power the unit got a bit warm and when i took the batteries out after the shoot they were quite hot.

Conclusion

            I am very happy with this flash especially for less than 100$. If u dont need TTL this is a great low budget option that has quick recycle time and lots of power! This can also be a great addition to your kit if u already have a Nikon speedlight and looking for a another flash to fire wirelessly. Stay tuned for part 2 where i will compare the Yongnou 560 II to Nikon Speedlights. Feel free to leave your comments or questions below.

here is the link to buy it on Amazon