My Yongnuo 568EX II review

minicoop1985 · Feb 8, 2015

Recently, I bought two Yongnuo 568EX IIs, and have had the opportunity to test them out pretty thoroughly. Needless to say, I'm quite impressed with these things. High speed sync is incredible and works very well-it also has enough power to let you stop your lens down a little. The one little quibble I have is the AF assist grid. Instead of being a nice, invisible IR grid, it's this bright red laser looking thing that shows up all over your subject's face. Otherwise, these things are very well made and impressively powerful. It appears that the common battery door issue has been fixed too. I'd give them an 8 out of 10 and recommend them to anyone.

Buckster · Feb 8, 2015

Can camera AF systems focus on invisible IR grids?

raventepes · Feb 8, 2015

I have the same Yongnuo's. I agree about the AF assist. It's annoying.

Slightly off topic, keep an eye on the battery compartment door. The little tabs that keep it there tend to break off easily. I ended up punching a screw through mine so that the doors didn't go anywhere. May not look all that great, but it works.

tirediron · Feb 8, 2015

Buckster said:
Can camera AF systems focus on invisible IR grids?

^^This.^^

minicoop1985 · Feb 8, 2015

I think they can, actually.

As for the battery door, I think they took some time to fix that. These seem sturdy and rigid.

Buckster · Feb 8, 2015

After a bit of research, it appears that they can, in a way.

The cameras themselves don't have the IR assist detecting capabilities. Instead, the IR based AF assist is done through the speedlight itself, and then the info is transmitted to the camera through the hot shoe. The speedlight fires an IR beam, has the ability to detect that IR light on the target, calculates the distance, and sends that info to the camera.

I would guess that would make for a much more involved (read "costly") flash build to make it possible for them to do that, as some higher end flashes do.

Even the built in AF assist on most cameras use a simple built in flash for the purpose.

I'm reminded of a Sony F717 I had a long time ago (gave it to my daughter when I was done playing with it). It had one of those laser grid patterns it put out to do AF assist with. It also had the capability of shooting both stills and video in complete darkness using IR. So, it would put out an IR beam to light up the darkness, which it could then "see" and record.

IR being what it is, it would still be dark to everyone in the room, other than the glow of the screen on the camera showing the scene before it. And yet, it didn't use that IR beam for AF assist, which, now that we're talking about it, is interesting.