Aperlite Camera Flash for Canon DSLR, High-Speed Sync, TTL, Wireless Master Control, YH-700C

I take about 6,000 pictures a year. Mostly of my kids and family at sports events and fun gatherings. I have used a CANON 50D body and CANON Speed lite 430EX and been quite happy with that setup. Recently I upgraded all my lenses and my body to the new Canon 80D and I figured it was time to also upgrade my flash. I looked at the Canon 600EX and at over $500 I felt it was a lot (combined with all my other upgrades this year) so I started re-searching alternatives and came across the YF-700C and decided after a lot of analysis and reviews on-line to give it a try. I wanted a stronger flash compared to the 430 and I wanted it to take advantage of all the latest features and integration with my new 80D body - and on paper - this flash fit the bill. I had a couple of concerns about the quality of the features and the level of integration with the body. It turns out that I had no reason for these concerns. The focus assist red beam for example turns out to be extremely fast and accurate and completely integrated with the autofocus of my 80D. In fact, it works a lot faster, more accurately and better than my old CANON Speedlite. All the advanced features such as High Speed Sync and TTL modes works perfectly. The recycle time to get ready for the next shot is incredibly fast as well using my same old rechargeable AA batteries, so I am able to make ton's of pictures in a row without missing a beat. All this for the bargin price of under $100 it's simply an incredible buy and I'm very pleased I made the decision to also upgrade the flash. I have already a ton of beautiful indoor and outdoor pictures of people and items that are significantly enhanced in large part due to the execellent flash!

Aperlite YN-700C Electronic Flash ReviewI was contacted by someone via email on dpreview.com asking if I would be willing to use an Aperlite flash for a while and then write a review on both Amazon.com and dpreview.com. The person put no stipulations whatsoever on the content of the review. I honestly was a bit skeptical as to whether this request was real or not, but after I supplied a mailing address I was surprised to find the flash actually showed up at my house, shipped directly from Amazon.com. So, what follows are my thoughts about the Aperlite YN-700C electronic flash.Background on meI mainly enjoy wildlife photography these days, so that means mostly birds (flying and perched) but also anything that moves around including bugs, dragonflies, damselflies, and butterflies. I don’t typically use a flash for much of what I do but I do own both a Yongnuo YN568EX II and a Canon 600EX-RT. Camera wise, I own a Canon 6D, Canon 70D, and Canon 7D mark 2. I also own a BetterBeamer that I bought to use with these flashes. I’ve been planning to photograph some hummingbirds around my feeders, so for that I also own three Manfrotto 74-inch 5001B Nano stands, which I will use while evaluating the Aperlite YN-700C.In the boxThe Aperlite box is simple – it says Electronic Flash on the top and below that you see YH-700C for Canon and YH-700N for Nikon. Mine has a big red dot next to the Canon option and a smaller white dot next to the Nikon option. I assume this means that I got the Canon version and there is, or will be, a version for Nikon users. Inside the box, in addition to the flash unit, are a little booklet, a stand/foot, and a gray colored cloth bag with a drawstring (both the Canon and the Yongnuo units mentioned above come with actual protective cases, with the Canon case being much nicer than the Yongnuo case). The flash unit had thin plastic protective sheets covering the IR window on the front and the LCD screen and buttons on the back. Curiously, after using the flash for a while, I soon noticed that I was seeing what I thought were easily made scratches in the LCD screen, which made me think that this was going to be a major “ding” for this flash in my review. I finally decided that this just could not be right, so a well-placed fingernail along the edge of the LCD revealed yet another thin-plastic protector tightly fit over the LCD surface. Once removed the LCD looks nice and does not scratch easily!Construction and Exterior FeaturesUpon getting the unit out of the box I immediately placed it on its stand and alongside both the Yongnuo and Canon. The three units look surprisingly similar upon casual inspection. On the flash head of the Aperlite one finds the standard white catch light panel and wide-angle diffuser. The flash head is notched at 6 positions, three set to angles of 45, 60, and 75 degrees. Straight up must be 90 degrees and there are two other positions close to zero. The head can also be rotated through about 270 degrees in azimuth. In contrast, both the Canon and Yongnuo units can be rotated a full 360 degrees. Also, the much more expensive Canon unit appears to have a locking mechanism that works in certain positions.The Aperlite has a large inferred window in the front just like the other two flash units. When looking at the flash unit from the LCD side, the battery compartment is on the right and holds 4 AA sized batteries. The battery door is spring loaded and when locked provides a nice tight fit. I mention this because on my particular Yongnuo flash unit, the door does not close down properly. I’ve been irritated by this since day one. When I bought mine, it cost about $180, even though both it and the Aperlite YN-700C cost about $100 on Amazon at the time of this review. So I’d say the quality of the door is one up for the Aperlite. On the left side of the unit, there is a cover for a compartment that houses a port for external power and a PC connection. The Canon unit matches this (and more) but the Yongnuo unit does not have a port for external power. So, that’s two up for the Aperlite, by my count.Both the Aperlite and Yongnuo units have the twisty knob on the bottom for connecting the flash to the camera hot shoe. The Canon has that left-to-right locking lever which is much preferred, but comes with a serious cost hit. I can live without the lever since I’d like extra flash units that can be placed off camera at various locations around a scene. To go with extra Canon 600EX-RTs would cost a small fortune, but both the Aperlite and Yongnuo are much more affordable.Moving on to the LCD screens and buttons, both the Aperlite and Yongnuo are very similar. In terms of using the devices, the buttons on the Yongnuo have the functions printed in larger letters. On the Aperlite, many of the clear buttons have tiny words printed under them. Such is the case for the mode, LCD panel illumination, sound switch, and zoom buttons. On the Yongnuo, much larger white lettering appears outside the buttons on the unit. Hence, in terms of reading/using the buttons on the back face, the Yongnuo wins. However, the advantage goes to the Aperlite in some other important ways. First, on the Aperlite there is a two-position on/off switch, with the words ON and OFF clearly shown. On the Yongnuo, you need to press and hold the button for a while to power up or power down the unit. I much prefer the Aperlite here since the operation is quicker and more reliable. On the Yongnuo I usually have to do it twice as the screen will briefly illuminate with just a tap of the button but won’t fully power the unit on or off unless you hold it a while. And while both units have a PILOT/LED button to test the flash, the one on the Yongnuo is large and stays illuminated when the unit is charged. It is a very bright red. The Aperlite has a separate and much smaller LED to show the unit is charged up while the PILOT button is off and functions solely as a button to test fire the flash. The nod goes to Aperlite here. The LCD screen on the Aperlite shines green when the lamp button is pressed while the Yongnuo LCD is amber. The lettering on the Aperlite is in a smaller font than that on the Yongnuo, so those with poor reading vision might prefer the Yongnuo, but I find them roughly the same.The Aperlite and Canon appear to be roughly the same height and have about the same size flash head. Both are taller than the Yongnuo and both have larger flash heads than the Yongnuo. With four AA batteries installed, the Canon is the heaviest (and the best built) followed by the Aperlite with the Yongnuo weighing the least of the three units.Flash FeaturesI’ve spent a good deal of time trying to figure out, feature wise, where the Aperlite fits relative to its competition. I’ve giving up on that because it’s taking too much time. There seems, as of this review, to be little clear info on this matter. What I can say this that the Aperlite YN700C flash is a very full-featured flash that compares very well, in my opinion, against both the Yongnuo YN568EX II and the Canon Speedlight 580EX II. It is not a direct competitor with Canon’s current flagship Speedlight, the 600EX-RT, however. Of course, the YN700C is about 1/5 the price of the 600EX-RT, so one can certainly see why many would be interested in this unit. The Aperlite YN700C is compatible with E-TTL II, E-TTL, and TTL flash modes that are found on many Canon DSLRs. It can serve as both a master and a slave (channels 1-4 and A,B,C), and supports both the S1 & S2 modes. Features like HSS (up to 1/8000 max shutter speed), flash exposure compensation and bracketing, auto-exposure lock, and second-curtain sync are supported. The unit has auto and manual zoom from 24 mm to 105 mm. There is also an overheating feature to extend the life of the flash units when lots of rapid bursts are made. There are a total of twelve custom features which the user can set to control some of the various features of the flash, like Auto Power off, FEB auto cancel, auto sleep time, etc. Basically, for me, this flash has all the features (and more) that I will likely ever need. I’m sure there are plenty of folks who need a flash like the Canon 600EX-RT, but I’m not really one of those people (I bought it because I caught it on sale for what seemed like a great price, but I’m not “PRO” enough to need those features).In an attempt to put a little objectiveness into this review I decided to do some simple testing (in hindsight, maybe this was a mistake). I put my Canon 50 mm F/1.8 II lens on my Canon 70D and attached the Yongnuo YN568EX II. I next put my Sigma 50 mm F/1.4 Art on my Canon 7DM2 and attached the Aperlite YN700C to it. I put both cameras in manual mode, one shot, non-continuous shooting, spot metering, and set their shutter speeds to 1/1000 and their apertures to F/2.8. I also enabled HSS (high-speed sync) on each which then locked the ISO at 400 on both cameras. I enabled Highlight Alert on both bodies (my default is enabled for when I’m out shooting birds) and set the brightness of their LCDs to the midpoint of the scale. I picked a target on a wall in my room to use as I varied the power level of each flash from 1/128 to 1/1. I took a shot of the scene on each camera, at the same power level, and walked through all of the power levels. What was interesting on the first round of testing is that the Aperlite appeared to be putting out a greater amount of light for each setting than did the Yongnuo. This was confirmed not only by the screen image, which obviously could be different, but also by the histograms of each camera. The highlight alert went off first (meaning at a lower power level) on the 7DM2 with the Aperlite. The histogram on the 7DM2 was more to the right than the one on the 70D (with the Yongnuo attached). I thought that maybe this was an issue with the lenses, in that maybe the Sigma lets in more light than the fantastic plastic 50 mm from Canon. To test this, I swapped the lenses around. Well, interestingly, that made no difference. The result seemed to be that the Aperlite, at each power level except at 1/128, puts out more power than the Yongnuo. I then swapped the flashes between the cameras (70D/Sigma/Aperlite vs 7DM2/Canon/Yongnuo) and found the exact same result – at all power levels except 1/128, the Aperlite seems to put out more power. Of course, the histograms are probably not accurate either as I have seen differences between what the camera displays and what I see for the same image in Adobe Lightroom, so make of this what you will. I will see if I can confirm these findings some other way and, if I cannot, I will consider deleting this section from this review.One other thing I learned while doing this test is that the buttons on the Yongnuo feel better to my hands than those of the Aperlite. I still hate the burning red Pilot LED on the Yongnuo, though, but I do like the display better in real-world usage.I also did some off-camera flash testing. I was able to use the Yongnuo in the hot shoe of my Canon 70D to trigger *two* Aperlite YN700Cs (I bought a second one after receiving one unit for this review) I had set up on light stands. I could adjust the power levels of each flash quite easily to get the type of lighting effect I wanted. I also set all three flashes (Yongnuo YN568EX II and two Aperlite YN700Cs) on stands and then triggered all three of them using the built in flash on my Canon 70D. I can’t wait to get started on my Hummingbirds, once they show up at my feedersSummaryI need to get this review finished so I’m going to stop here for now. I feel as though the Aperlite is the new kid on the block and is a mighty good value for those of us with real budgets. Owning three or four of these will make a killer lighting system for budding photographers. It seems the Aperlite, by being a Canon compatible flash unit, works very well with other third-party flashes like the Yongnuo YN568EX II. Given that it has an external power plug whereas the Yongnuo doesn’t, means it might be the better overall deal. The battery door on the Aperlite is, in my experience, better made than the one on the Yongnuo. The buttons labels are easier to read on the Yongnuo and they feel better in practice, at least to my fingers. Both of these flashes fit my Better Beamer so they are useful for getting some light on birds hiding in shadowy places. I would subtract one point from the Aperlite relative to the Yongnuo for the button labels and button feel, but then add it back for the power port that is missing on the Yongnuo. Overall, I would rate them as more or less equal, but I do feel more confident about the construction of the Aperlite.Updates to come as I use these units more in the future.

I bought the Aperlite for use as a second flash for use on paid photography jobs. I tested it with my a Canon Rebel T4i which is my primary camera. I tested the auto zoom mode and verified that the flash output adjusts as the Canon 18-135 IS STM zoom lens changes its zoom level. I compared its flash output level with that of the Canon 430 EX II flash and found that the 430 seemed to provide brighter light at maximum zoom. This surprised me because the Aperlite YH-700C is more like the Canon 580 which has greater range than the Canon 430. Nevertheless, I am satisfied that the Aperlite provides adequate flash and proper synchronization with the Canon T4i.I also tested it with a Canon SX10 IS superzoom camera. Here I found that the Aperlite didn't sync with the SX10 zoom setting. Although it fired every time, the output flash was not bright enough for several photos. Using the Aperlite in manual mode for the same photos, I verified that it is capable of providing adequate flash for those same photos. Because the Aperlite flash brightness did not sync with the SX10 zoom level, I would say that it is NOT compatible with the SX10. That raises my suspicions about its compatibility with other non-SLR Canon cameras.Further testing with the Aperlite and the Canon T4i confirmed that works properly as a slave to the T4i built in flash. I did not test the Aperlite as a master. I briefly tried the Aperlite in multi mode where it performs like a strobe light. I tried a few different multi mode settings to verify that the frequency of the flash and the number of times it flashes varied as expected. Since I do not expect to use this mode often, I didn't do a lot of testing here.My conclusion is that the Aperlite YH-700C is an excellent low cost flash compatible with the Canon T4i SLR. Based on my experience and customer reviews reported on Amazon I expect it to be compatible with other Canon SLRs. Because it did not sync with my older non-SLR Canon SX10 IS camera, I suspect that it is not compatible with some other non-SLR Canon cameras. I intend to use the Aperlite with my T4i and use the Canon 430 flash with the SX10 IS camera. This fulfills my goal of having 2 cameras and 2 external flash units.I am satisfied with the quality of the Aperlite. I returned the first one I received because I thought it had scratches on the LCD screen. Amazon took it back without any problem and I bought a second unit. Only after I received that one did I realize that the "scratches" were actually bubbles on a throwaway protective plastic sheet. The Aperlite uses a rotary wheel to tighten/loosen its attachment to the camera. I prefer the slide bar that's on the Canon 430 flash because I find it easier and faster to use. Considering that the Aperlite is priced far lower than the Canon 430, 580, and 600 flash models, I can tolerate this minor inconvenience.