Until fairly recently I had used some cheap ebay triggers for studio and location work which worked fine the majority of the time but became increasingly frustrated with the number of misfires I was getting – you get what you pay for I guess. I replaced these with a set of Yongnuo RF603 triggers which were a real improvement and my misfire problems were a thing of the past. A friend of mine Stu Glen was in raptures about a set of Pixel Kings he had recently bought and the virtues of High speed Sync (HSS) which worked with both hot shoe flashes and studio strobes. I was close to investing in a set but then read that Yongnuo were about to release a similar trigger, the YN-622C, the rest as they say is history!!
These are my thoughts, admittedly based upon one location shoot, about the new trigger. The YN 622C is a fairly substantial piece of kit and solidly built with a metal hot shoe attachment. It is a 2 way transceiver with seven channels and 3 flash groupings available. Functions available include TTL ratio control, manual selection of power output for different groups and HSS. The unit runs on 2 AA batteries, has an on off switch together with controls for group and channel setting and a test button, something I missed having on the 603.
My main motivation was to use these on location with my Bowens lights / Travelpak set up so I headed out with the lovely Sharon to try them out in the field. Set up is a doddle with one trigger locked on to the camera, secured with a locking screw, with the other attached to the Bowens Gemini 500 strobe via a cable which screws into the side of the unit. The units worked really well throughout the shoot, firing faultlessly, though to be fair the camera to flash distances were not too demanding. Towards the end of the shoot I really pushed the HSS, or Super Sync as they call it, and the images posted were all shot at f1.4 and between 1/2000 and 1/4000 sec, iso 100, which obviously throws up a lot of creative possibilities for future shoots. So a really promising start and to say I was pleased with their performance is an understatement, will hopefully get to shoot a lot more with them before the winter weather finally arrives.
