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4 More Flashes “Pocket Strobes” Worth Looking At

Welcome to four more flashes or pakis troves they're worth looking at now these are basically some great starter flashes, so if it's not in the budget to go with our favorites, these are great flashes to look at except for well with the exception of this one in red, I don't like that one, but each of these have a little bit there cons and so we're gonna go through and talk through each of them in this tutorial so let's start from the top with the young what? Why end five sixty four plus I put plus there because they're constantly changing version numbers they literally are changing them like every half year so that's this guy he is seventy one dollars or she maybe it's a girl flash like I don't know what the originating sects of this flash is let's just assume but like all my items, it still has the plastic on it. I'm going to put that back on this time because I was really disturbing myself by taking off last time. Okay, so this little guy is seventy one bucks and it comes with a buil...

t in radio, but it is not a full feature flash, so the radio inside this can control other off camera flash units and you can also get a radio triggering system with the young list so they have their own like system that works pretty well actually with their own flashes but it's emmanuelle triggering system okay, so that means that you can control power you can control zoom but you don't have things like t l rear curtains cinc high speed sync and that kind of stuff those air full feature flash functions but still at the price holy cow I mean the main benefit of this flashes that is extremely inexpensive off camera flash for seventy bucks is absolutely ridiculous and frankly kind of frightening because thes flash cos thes chinese branded factories air essentially taking cannon designs and other designs and replicating them making them more simple and then selling them back directly to consumers at insane price points which I have no idea what is going to do to the name brands but yes we'll actually do know what it's doing the same brand that's putting him out of business but competition is good long as they follow the rules. All right, so this has the built in radio system it has up to three groups and I think with their own transmitter you can have up to six groups as well. Now it's a simple menu system is pretty easy to use. It has certain things like external power input it has a metal hot shoe the only thing I have to say and I almost dropped it every time I hold this guy almost dropped the battery thing pops open they only have to say about this device and the reason why I don't use it professionally it's just because you know obviously for seventy dollars there's going to be a little bit of a quality control kind of an issue you're not getting something with the best build quality so that's the main downside it has kind of an average to below average build quality and we have poor third party wireless range now many of you would say that doesn't really matter and I would tend to agree if you're going with this system that you're not gonna be using pocket wizards with that it has its own built in radio you're buying it because it has everything built in and it's cheap and when you use it with all of its built in functionality for the most part it works well and it's pretty consistent this is the one caveat because of quality control issues I would say that if you are using this unprofessional shoots have extras with you because they will break you will have issues with consistency and firing every now and then and you need to replace a unit with a new one so just have extras but it's seventy bucks it's easy to have two three extras of these women one of these guys five of these guys is equivalent to like four our one foe takes me trust so I mean it's like five to one so that's that okay? So the new r t t eight fifty by the way these two right here these are the best budget starter flashes so if you're just starting out in the stuff these are the two I would look at if budget is a concern the newer tt eight fifty that this guy starts at one hundred five bucks and for an additional twenty five bucks you can get the radio which basically this is what the radio looks like on your camera and it has a little thing that pops into the side that allows you to control the unit now from this radio it's pretty cool you can actually switch to different groups and you can also control power directly on your off camera flashes which is nice again it kind of saves the it's the hassle of having to have someone walk over to it but you can't control the zoom so you need to set the zoo manually on this and then control power from this guy from your camera but still it works very very well ok and for what it does it it doesn't well one hundred twenty five bucks for a hundred thirty bucks basically perot cf it does budget off camera flash extremely well but here's the thing what I like is that it has a simple interface it has a great third party wireless range, so if you want to use it with like say a pocket wizard this actually does have a really good third party range and the reason why you might want that is because when you have a flash like if you're using a five eighty x two on your camera this guy has no ports to make him plug in so basically you have to get a hot shoe to p c synch adapter and use it that way so if you want to use a pop quiz in those cases this unit actually works works works it burke very big it works very well with pocket wizard which is kind of nice and also the little radio thing tends to fall off a lot so it's nice to like tape it on or something again these air design issues that you're just gonna have when you're buying very inexpensive items but it has fantastic recycle times and that's primarily due to the fact that it has this guy noticed that it does not have a traditional doubly batteries that's both a pro and a con the proto this is that you get very fast recycled times like one to one point five second full flash recycled times but there's constant too ok so the factory wireless system is available for twenty five bucks basically per flash it has uh lissy control the power but not zoom and it has a metal ha shoo now let's talk about the cons of this unit number one is the battery quality control okay, so the quality control needs batteries is not very good, which means that we've gotten a lot of duds. You basically get these batteries where you charge them completely, and then they're dead within, like, three shots and you're like, okay, that's a bad battery got to send it back to the factory, so once again, you need to have lots of extra batteries on hand need to have lots will at least a couple extra units on hand in case something goes wrong with the unit, because quality control on either side is not that great, but you're benefitting by buying them for such a cheap amount. Number two and I don't even know if I put this on here, okay? I think I forgot to put this on here, but the next khan that I'd say is worth mentioning is that they both this super quick, recycled time when you're using these batteries and when the batteries are working that's all fine and dandy until you actually realize that you can only pop about fifteen to twenty shots before these overheat, and once they overheat, that recycled times slows tremendously down to basically worse than a regular flash. So if you're in outdoor situations where you're dealing with a lot of heat and you're firing at full power, well, very quickly this thing is gonna overheat and it's going to slow down those recycle times tremendously, even when indoors, we're testing them in a cool situation indoors after fifteen twenty pops at full power again, you're you're running to overheating issues many of you might say that doesn't seem like it be a problem, it actually is okay, so if you're using a pocket strobe and you're doing anything outside overpowering the son, you're going to be firing at one over one, you'll be firing at full power. This is a very common shooting situation out in california when you're in mid summer heat during the middle of the day, you know, it's very, very hot as well and were trying to overpower the sun still, so this is a problem that we actually run into quite often, even when you're in the studio. If you're shooting fashion, if you're doing other things, we have to pop fairly quickly and you want to shoot at a higher aperture or you want to be able to use modifiers again, you're going to be using these close to full power so that whole, like kind of quick, recycled time that they boast I would toss that out the window for the most part, because if you're firing that fast and you're using a full power, it will overheat. Number two, there are no w battery slots, and that means that if these batteries die and you run out of these, you have no way to power the unit, okay? Except for possibly external power, I think it does have an external power on here, but I've never no actually no external power, so you don't have external power. That's the only way to see these things going so we already mentioned below, average build quality are average, basically to below average build quality and also the wireless system is kind of clunky and pretty cheap. I'm in these units, they're very, very plasticky. The ones that pop on the side, they fall off a lot. You can lose them very, very easily. So again, these are kind of some of the drawbacks that you get with this system. But what you do get is for a budget price range. You know, for four hundred bucks, you can have three off camera flashes, radio and that's a great deal overall. All right, let's, move on to this guy. This guy, the basically what I'm talking about here is an icon. Sb twenty four twenty eight eighties all these old nikon flashes we used to use these a ton, especially a few years back for, um off camera flashes and by the way, we do shoot cannon but we'd use these because we always shoot manual off camera flash now these guys were fantastic, but the only thing here is that the price of these units was driven up quite a bit with david hobby the strongest so david hobby start talking about these is being fantastic manual flashes and people started buying up all over the place and the price is actually went up quite high where you're buying use flashes for one hundred fifty to two hundred bucks used to be able to get him for like fifty, sixty bucks used off of ebay or craigslist or whatever and now that's just not possible now they range between one hundred to two hundred dollars plus, which means that on top of that you need to add a pocket wizard or something that's going to be a radio trigger and that's a minimum of one hundred bucks two hundred fifty bucks. So for one of these you're looking at a minimum of two hundred to three hundred fifty dollars to have a single off camera flash now in, you know, two, three years ago that was still okay. It wasn't the best thing it was still okay, though, because we didn't have all these other chinese options basically they were they were knew they were coming out, you know, nobody knew about them until more recently, well, they've been out for a little while, but everyone's been testing them and kind of dipping their toes in the water so forth, but now that we have those, it kind of makes this it's an obsolete choice because now you're spending a lot of money for something that's used it's already and used flash to begin with. So if your bulb has issues, if you need warranty service, you're already gonna have problems have to pay more to get them fixed and it doesn't even have the convenience of some of these other guys. So these guys with built in radios with their own systems, we can control power and so forth you're getting none of that convenience with this at a higher price point, so I would say that's an option that used to be an option that really shouldn't be one anymore another option that used to be great we call it the once a workhorse but now it's just a horse not a very good one at that's more like a donkey used be a workhorse now it's just a donkey this is the vivid tar to eighty five hp and those of you that have taken my workshops know how much I despise this guy and I have like fifteen of them because I originally bought them when they did the re release their target a release of this guy back in the seventies and you can see that this was it looks like it was built in the seventies. This guy was built in the seventies they didn't re release lately basically so they just brought it back. It was like we need cheap manual flashes so vivid tars that okay will reproduce the avatar twenty five hbs the problem was that the quality control wasn't as good as it used to be. The build quality isn't as good as it used to be. Everything is just crappy. Okay? You have recycled times of like eight seconds when you're shooting full power and it goes down to like after the first ten fifteen shots it'll go to like eleven seconds it's an absolutely just ridiculous recycle time also we have these uh this little port right here with me take it that's how you have to get it. I get to tear it off but see this I call this the needle p c synch port or the needle port why? Because it's freaking sharp man, you could stab yourself with this but that's how it sinks yet that this specialized cable that plugs into the side of this and it's really difficult to get out on that gives you your three point five millimeters sink cable right here that will plug into a pocket was it okay? So four let's see this guy cost ninety five dollars by itself but you also gotta add in the cable to that which is like fifteen or twenty bucks and then you have to add in the park with it, which is another hundred a hundred fifty bucks so you're looking at two hundred two hundred fifty dollars just to get a manual off camera flash that kind of poopie now again, four years ago when we were buying these things up it seemed like a good option at the time because the original twenty five hp was a workhorse there was a fantastic flash it just worked there was built like a this nasty tank but it still worked now not so much ok, so these were options that I would have said would've been great in the past that just really isn't that great of an option. Now now the only pro to this was that it is simple to use you have this oh so elegant designed to control power right here in this oh so elegant designed teo control your zoom right there lovely it did have fantastic wireless range. So that was one thing when you're using pot was there with this it worked like any distance it was ridiculous, but again, without you get the clunky old school interface terrible wonder one recycle time it looks like a tank modifiers don't easily fit this head because as you can see, this is a very abnormally large head size. Look at this. The other heads fit inside of this. Okay, so, like, things like a magma don't fit this, you know, a lot of flash modifiers dome. The song dong doesn't fit this. All right, so we also have a plastic hot shoe. It requires third party radios. It requires a special cable for that. And I mentioned plastic hush you again. Why? Because I hate plastic shoes. So that made the list twice. Number five in memory. Hey, plastic. Okay, so as far as these options go what's my point, these two used to be good options use in icons and the re release of the vivid tar they used to be okay, options. But now, with the young lord in the newer options and other chinese made flashes, these are becoming far better budget starter options. If you're looking to this jump into this now, of course, by a couple extras, make sure that you're testing that. Make sure that you're constantly using them so that, you know, if something's going bad, you get it back to the factor and get a replace and you have replacement units and replacing batteries available. But to be honest, they're just much better options going on this side versus going on this side. So those are the ones I want to mention, kind of on a roll mentions. Well, I would say these two are more honorable. These two, they used to be honorable, but not so much. Now we're done with this video. Let's, head on to the next one.