- Joined
- Jul 8, 2005
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- 45,747
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- Location
- Victoria, BC
- Website
- www.johnsphotography.ca
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The Godox AD360II-N: For a while I've been wanting/needing a portable light with more oomph than a speedlight, but also with HSS; the Godox AD 360II seemed to fill the bill. After talking to Ron Lane and reading a number of reviews on line, I decided to order one of these units. I'm not a huge fan of third-party gear, but but there were enough good things being said about this unit that I didn't think it was a huge leap. It arrived yesterday, and I spent this morning putting it through its paces, and I have to say, I'm very impressed.
Bare tube & reflector
Rear w/ illuminated dot-matrix display
The unit is advertised as being 320 w/s with a GN of 280/85(f/m). Some reasonably accurate testing with flash meters indicated that as one would expect with this sort of gear, those claims were a bit optimistic. I figure it to be more like 250 w/s with a GN of 215/65 but for a speedlight, that's still pretty damn good.
The build quality is very good overall, much better than most of the MiC stuff I've seen. My only real complaint is the twist-locks that secure the power cord DIN plugs into their receptacles. These seem a bit rough and clunky, but they do the job. The controls all have a good feel and there's no sensation of "don't press too hard or you'll damage it". The supplied shoulder strap for the battery pack is a bit short, but since it also includes a built-in belt clip, this isn't a huge issue.
On the performance front, some very good,some not quite so good. Using the unit as a fill in full sun in TTL, it was adequate, but barely. That said, I'm not overly concerned as I likely will almost never use it that way. As a manual flash, it works very well, 'though the 5600K claimed colour temperature isn't quite as consistent as it could be. Again though, for the price and the overall performance, that's something I can live with. What really impressed me however was the HSS performance (the feature for which I especially wanted this unit). I dropped the extra few dollars for the HSS capable X1N wireless trigger (the flash unit has a built-in receiver) which makes controlling it from behind the camera very simple. HSS works flawlessly. I had no problems syncing at 1/8000 second.
Trigger
The battery pack has two ports, and mine came with a 'Y' cable allowing me to use both and reduce recycling times significantly. Recycle time for full power is just about 2 seconds, and the unit is supposed to be good for up to 1800 flashes. I feel that too may be a little optimistic, but the couple of hundred pops from today didn't move the power indicator at all.
Battery Pack
Overall I'm very pleased. This isn't Profoto quality or performance, but it's also not Profoto prices. At around $500ish, it's actually cheaper than some of the top-end Canon & Nikon speedlights, and has a lot more power than they do. Operation is simple, and intuitive. Time will tell on the durability front, but I see no reason to expect that it won't last a long time. For someone needing a reasonable amount of portable light and HSS, this is definitely an option worth considering!
Bare tube & reflector
Rear w/ illuminated dot-matrix display
The unit is advertised as being 320 w/s with a GN of 280/85(f/m). Some reasonably accurate testing with flash meters indicated that as one would expect with this sort of gear, those claims were a bit optimistic. I figure it to be more like 250 w/s with a GN of 215/65 but for a speedlight, that's still pretty damn good.
The build quality is very good overall, much better than most of the MiC stuff I've seen. My only real complaint is the twist-locks that secure the power cord DIN plugs into their receptacles. These seem a bit rough and clunky, but they do the job. The controls all have a good feel and there's no sensation of "don't press too hard or you'll damage it". The supplied shoulder strap for the battery pack is a bit short, but since it also includes a built-in belt clip, this isn't a huge issue.
On the performance front, some very good,some not quite so good. Using the unit as a fill in full sun in TTL, it was adequate, but barely. That said, I'm not overly concerned as I likely will almost never use it that way. As a manual flash, it works very well, 'though the 5600K claimed colour temperature isn't quite as consistent as it could be. Again though, for the price and the overall performance, that's something I can live with. What really impressed me however was the HSS performance (the feature for which I especially wanted this unit). I dropped the extra few dollars for the HSS capable X1N wireless trigger (the flash unit has a built-in receiver) which makes controlling it from behind the camera very simple. HSS works flawlessly. I had no problems syncing at 1/8000 second.
Trigger
The battery pack has two ports, and mine came with a 'Y' cable allowing me to use both and reduce recycling times significantly. Recycle time for full power is just about 2 seconds, and the unit is supposed to be good for up to 1800 flashes. I feel that too may be a little optimistic, but the couple of hundred pops from today didn't move the power indicator at all.
Battery Pack
Overall I'm very pleased. This isn't Profoto quality or performance, but it's also not Profoto prices. At around $500ish, it's actually cheaper than some of the top-end Canon & Nikon speedlights, and has a lot more power than they do. Operation is simple, and intuitive. Time will tell on the durability front, but I see no reason to expect that it won't last a long time. For someone needing a reasonable amount of portable light and HSS, this is definitely an option worth considering!
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