I recently purchased a external flash for my Cannon 1100d. I brought a Yongnuo Speedlite YN560 III The flash gun was advertised as being compatible with a host of Cannon cameras including my own, however when I go into the setting for an external flash its states that incompatible flash or flash power is turned off. Has anyone come across this before?
Controlling the flash from the body is more a Nikon then a Canon thing. If you bought the Canon version you bought the correct flash. 560 is a manual flash so you have to set the output power yourself. It should work fine. Forget the camera menus, there's nothing there, everything you need to set is on the back panel of your flash.
Some of the larger photo bloggers have reviews of Yongy flash gear, and their reviews might be of great help. I would search for some of the multiple YN 560-III reviews, such as this one Yongnuo YN560-III Speedlite Review - DavidPartington.com or some of the reviews/field tests done by the "lighting bloggers". These folks often have plain-language information that will be of great help. As far as a MANUAL output flash unit, that means today that the communication with the camera is basically not much more than FIRE!, using the central hotshoe contact; the central hotshoe contact pin in the camera's hotshoe is the FIRE! contact; the other, multiple contacts on the camera's hotshoe are not used because a manual output flash does not provide real-time TTL flash control. The 560-III is a manual flash, but it offers remote power adjustment by the user, via remote control, but it IS NOT what would be called a "dedicated speedlight", dedicated being the camera industry jargon for a flash unit that can do the other possible flash functions, like flash ready light or recycling complete notification, sufficient/insufficient flash confirmation, under-exposed warning, and so on. On a manual flash like the Yongy 560-III the concept that it is "compatible with Canon" is really not much more than letting you know it uses the standard ISO flash foot (and not say the Minolta/Sony proprietary flash foot design), and that it will Fire! when you press the camera's shutter release.
Thanks. I tried the camera in manual mode and set the flash to manual as per instructions, however still wont fire. so its either the flash or the hotshoe. I'll drop the camera into a local store and get them to test it
