A Review of the YONGNUO RF 602 Wireless Flash Trigger
By Devin Faulkner
Seeking to understand the world of off-camera strobe control can be a mysterious quest. The Holy Grail of this journey is, of course, the Pocket Wizard, which will very likely remain the Industry Standard for some time to come. You most likely know of the Wizard's best selling point, it's reliable. That reliability comes at a price. As of this review, the Pocket-Wizard Plus II are selling online for around $169.00 EACH. To do the job right you need four: main, fill, hair, and one on the camera, that will be $676.00 + shipping, thank you very much, have a nice day!
Now I'm all for buying quality, having the right tools for the job and all of that, but just couldn't bring myself to spend that much money for radio remote capability at this point in my career. I began to look at the alternatives, some of the solutions work well, but nearly the same price point. Others just don't work well at all. I read that something was coming, a promise of a reasonably priced solution was in the near future. So I decided to wait it out, to depend on my SB 800's built-in CLS, which mostly works, but I've just never grown comfortable using. Occasionally borrowing P.W's from a friend when the job called for them, but that's like borrowing a car, only with no insurance if somehow something goes horribly wrong.
Enter the Yongnuo RF 602's, they've been available since 4th quarter 2009. I found out about them in early March 2010. Based on what I was told first hand and what I could find on the internet, I decided it was time to buy. I found a retailer on EBay named Mr.Studio01, based in Hong Kong. I purchased two transmitters and four receivers; all for the suspiciously low price of $115.00 shipping INCLUDED! When ordering make sure you order the proper kit, it should say "for Nikon D90 & D5000" or "for Canon 1D, 5D, 5DmkII," etc. The difference is in the connection cables you will receive with the remotes. Why two transmitters? This cheap why not! Wireless systems can be tricky, even expensive ones and especially inexpensive ones. There's also another great reason to get two transmitters, read on.
Ten days pass, and the padded shipper bearing Hong Kong postmarks arrived. Although I was at first a little suspect of the packaging, but everything survived the trip. I received two boxes, each with a transmitter, receiver, batteries, cables, and enough mini-packs of Silica Gel to soak up any errant salivations as I excitedly unpacked my new bounty. I also received a separate bubble pack containing the other two receivers, cables, and batteries.
Receiver: Operates with two, AAA batteries, inserted on the bottom side. The door can be a bit tricky to open especially when the unit is 'loaded' with batteries. Just be careful and you should be ok. The hot shoe on the bottom has a 1/4 inch thread so the unit can be easily mounted on a light stand or tripod. The top has the power switch, channel dip switches and strobe hot shoe. An LED will flash red every three seconds when the receiver is on. It will also turn green, then red when the test button on the transmitter is pushed. Installation on an strobe is easy, just slide it on and lock it down. For other applications, a three pin jack is located in the back of the unit. The cables supplied, which seem of good quality, fit into this jack. Line up the slot at the top of the cable, push in and then tighten the threaded collar. Might be difficult if you have big fingers. Two cables come with each receiver: a 3.5mm 'mini' cable with a 1/4" phono plug adapter, this can go into many studio strobes for example, any White Lightning, or Alien Bees.
The second cable is a three pin to 'special', it's camera brand and model specific, and when this cable is attached to the receiver and plugged into your camera body, (in my case the GPS Jack on my D90) it becomes the receiving end of a remote trigger for your camera. (Remember earlier I eluded to the other reason for two transmitters, BINGO!) This can be a big deal, depending on your make and model of DSLR, The only remote I know of for the D90 is the little $20 infrared remote that works if you're in front of the camera. Some wired remotes for DSLR's cost hundreds of dollars. This one is wireless and inexpensive.
Transmitter: The feather-light transmitter simply slips on the camera's hot shoe has no on/off switch and has no method of locking, in this case it needs none, snug but not too snug on a Nikon D90. On top of the transmitter is the two-stage test button. Pushing 'halfway' will wake up a SB 800 if it's in standby, all the way will test fire. The indicator LED will glow green, then red during that operation. The front has a PC jack and LED indicator. The transmitter's PC jack is for connecting the transmitter to a camera if the hot shoe is being used by a on-camera fill flash or other device. If your camera body has a PC jack, you can take advantage of this feature. The battery for the transmitter is a CR-2 type. The specs state that it should last 20,000 actuations, but that remains to be seen. They seem to be cheap enough online to buy a couple and store in the camera bag for that unknown day. The fit on the battery door could be tighter, but has not popped open of it's own accord as of this review.
16 channels: The channel frequency dip switches are located on the bottom of the transmitter and the top of the receiver. From the factory, the dip switches are covered with a protective amber film. The film creates an optical illusion that the dip switches are under a plastic window, they are not. Just remove this film with a toothpick so you can change the settings, you'll also need something like a toothpick to flip the switches. I cut down a few bamboo skewers and put in my bag for this purpose. For a transmitter and receiver to talk to each other, the dip switches have to be set the same on both units, or if the Transmitter's switches are set to all on, (channel 1) it will trigger all 16 frequencies.
In my opinion, the dip switches although versatile, are poorest design feature. They are just harder to change "in the heat of battle" than the Pocket Wizards. You may not think you'd ever need to change them quickly but you'd be surprised just how often you might need to switch to a different channel.
That being said, I'm speaking of a piece of gear that is roughly 1/8th the price of a Pocket Wizard and does the same job virtually as well! In another review the author noted the hot shoe of his transmitter came off. (The main reason I purchased two.) The screws are located inside the battery compartment in such a way that it's near impossible to snug them down without disassembling the transmitter. In both of my transmitters, the screws appear to be seated tightly. Overall quality of build is high, especially considering the price point of the units.
Range: I didn't purchase these remotes with the intent to use them at great distances from each other, I just wanted to remove the annoying PC cable in studio settings and add a bit more freedom and reliability than the Nikon infrared based system provides. That being said, since I decided to write this review it would be unprofessional of me not to test the range of operation. Transmitter and rolling tape measure in hand. I walked away from the strobe/receiver, set on a light stand on the edge of my driveway, firing every 20 feet or so as I walked down the street. (I live in a very average suburban neighborhood.) I was thinking a true consistent working range of 60ft would be great. My expectations were definitely exceeded! The first misfire was at 200ft, it was only one misfire, then it worked well. Reaching 250ft, it would misfire once or twice out of ten. Same at 300 ft. It finally became inconsistent at around 400 feet! It still fired, but I had to turn the transmitter bottom towards the strobe which isn't "real world". Pocket Wizards claim 1600ft. and some sports action shooters have been known use that kind of range. In the everyday world, for most of us, having reliable 100ft plus range for remote flash at a budget price is just incredible.
The Manual: You'll have to sit down with a cup of coffee and have a few chuckles as you read this manual, dicey translation at it's best. Although, if you can punch through the poor syntax, it does contain useful information. An example of such is on page 11 under the section "Function extend". Using the RF-602's to fire multiple cameras. I tried this by hooking up a receiver to my D90's 'GPS' jack using the supplied cable, then slipping the transmitter on my wife's D40 hot shoe. I pressed the shutter button of the D40 and both cameras fired. This does not provide perfect synchronization, but it's close. I tested this by pointing both cameras at my television and shooting a scene with some action. Worst case, I'd say it's at most 1/30th of a second off between the master camera and the remote. Not perfect, but not bad either. This feature could lead to some fun photographic experiments.
"Unlimited Wonderful" a tagline printed on the back of the RF-602's box. I thought it humorous upon first glance, but after using these remotes for a couple of months, I'd say it's a perfect summation.
