Monday, September 2, 2013

Yongnuo expected to come out with a transmitter for their YN-622 system of flash triggers

I read on Flash Havoc that Yongnuo is expected to announce a new flash transmitter for their YN-622Ns in October 2013.  

http://flashhavoc.com/yn-622-tx-transmitter-with-lcd-coming/
(if you follow flash equipment, this is a great site that I recommend bookmarking)

For anyone who's read up on the YN-622Ns, they are a cheap alternative to radio poppers or pocket wizards, offering full i-TTL control of Nikon flashes off-camera - effectively replicating CLS functionality over radio so it doesn't have to be line-of-sight.  

In order to transmit up to this point, you either had to learn an arcane system of button pushes, or you could mount an SU-800, SB-900/910 or SB-700 on top of a YN-622N mounted on the camera.  This works really well but is a bit bulky and does effectively take one of your flashes out of commission (you can fire it from on-camera, but this isn't ideal).  The new transmitter will provide an SU-800 like interface and will attached directly onto the hotshoe (rather than sitting on top of the YN-622N).  This will be more compact AND will free up another flash to use off camera!!

I'll write more once I see an official announcement from Yongnuo.........

until then....happy shooting!


Sunday, September 1, 2013

My son Rowan has signed up for Basketball, so I thought I would try to represent that in a photo.  This is a three light setup.  Speedlights are on either side of him both in TTL (the one on the left is dialed into -1 EV in TTL).  I have a third set to manual on 1/2 power to highlight the goal (with a Honl grid on it).  I would have preferred a 4th speedlight to provide some rim lighting against Rowan, but I ran out of speedlights :-).

I see a few things I can improve on next time (in addition to the 4th speedlight),  such as dialing down and trying to more evenly spread the lighting on the basketball goal.  I may also try to bring in a little of the sky which was fairly dramatic at that time (it was dusk).  However, overall I am happy with with the image.  By the way, if you play Rowan in basketball, don't let him get within 4 to 5 feet of the goal.....he's a killer shot from that distance! :-).