Great flash on budget Yongnuo 460 user review
I purchased two Yongnuo 460 Speedlites a year ago as additional flashes to my Canon 580 EX II flashgun. I wanted to extend the amount of flashes for creative purposes. Unfortunately, at that time I was on a tight budget, which meant buying more of Canon flashes wasn’t an option for me. I searched the Internet and came across this inexpensive off camera flash with many users giving it a very positive opinion. Luckily for me, my camera Canon 450D was on the list of the YN 460 Speedlite compatibility.
Technical specifications:
Guide Number: 33
Power source: 4 x AA size batteries (Alkaline or Ni-MH are suitable)
Recycle time: 5 sec (with alkaline batteries)
Colour Temperature: 5600K
Flash adjustment: 7 different power levels (1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64)
Head rotation: Up and down -7 to 90°, left and right 0 to 270°
Power Saving: Auto power off after 60 min. in stand-by mode.
Dimensions: 72 x 135 x 85mm
Weight: 250g
Works with: hot shoe cameras, remote triggers, as a slave flash.
In the dark winter days photography becomes a great fun when using flash guns. I’ve been experimenting with YN 460 a lot in the past year. I have been using YN 460 on its own as well as in pair with Canon 580 EX II. These flashes work nicely together.
For beginners in flash photography (those who like to use manual settings in their cameras) it’s a perfect flash, because it’s always better to start from something simple. Besides for the money you pay you don’t need to worry in case you won’t be using it too often and feel that you wasted your precious money on extra gear.
Some people might be put off by the fact that YN 460 has only manual mode, which means all the settings have to be chosen by hand. If you use this Speedlite on camera, it won’t be giving you a perfect exposure automatically; you will be in charge of that yourself. However, it was never a problem for me as I taught myself to go full manual both in camera and flash from the beginning.
On the other hand, this flash doesn’t have too many settings to be bothered about. All you need to do is to switch on the flash, select a mode: Manual (indicated by “M”), or Slave (indicated by “S1” and “S2”) if you want to use it with another flash unit, then using power level buttons (indicated by “+” and “-“) choose how strong you want your flash to be and you are ready to shoot. You will need to take a few shots increasing or decreasing the power to see which works best, but with practice it will be getting much easier to guess the power you need for a shot.
In comparison to Canon 580 EX II this flash doesn’t have many interesting capabilities such as: high-speed sink, MULTI stroboscopic flash, external flash meter and so on, but if you don’t plan on going deep into flash photography, then you don’t really need all those additions.
Pros
- Light weight
- Easy to use
- Extendible Reflector
- Extendible Diffuser
- Slave mode
- Affordable price
- Screw underneath to use flash on tripod
- Mini Stand
- Rotating head
- Can be used off camera
Cons
- Manual mode only
- Rather loud noise when flash recharges
- Doesn’t work in TTL mode
- No waterproof sealing
If you have any more questions about this Speedlite, feel free to ask them in the comments.