should i get a better flash?

i have two yong nuo 460s, for what its worth they work well enough for me and have for quite sometime. I really have no immediate need to go TTL, for starter the price of not only a canon flash but the radio trigger upgrade as well.

however i did notice the other night i couldn't sync second curtain with my 5dii, not that it affected my shoot, i certain had more throwaways than i would have liked, i think second curtain would have helped with night portraits and dragging the shutter but It got me thinking . i had planned on picking up a third flash and i wonder if its time to get a canon brand flash and delegate the Yong nuos to slaves.

So besides TTL, does going with a canon brand really offer me anything over my YN460s to justify the price point i will need to shell out.?

Power. Typically the 'comparable' canon flash will have more power (in real world tests, not what they give out for specs)

The YN-622 is the trigger to go with if you'd like to have remote manual power of compatible flashes, along with ettl, and you don't have to get canon flashes to do that now, there are good, reliable yn flashes that are used by many here on the forum and they have good reviews. If you check the 622 guide in my sig, you will find a section on the various body's and flashes and compatibilities/functi​ons available.

Used 430ex2's are close in price to the ettl YN flashes, and I think the power is pretty comparable .. so it all depends on what is most important to you.

mike_311 wrote in post #15959862
... So besides TTL, does going with a canon brand really offer me anything over my YN460s to justify the price point i will need to shell out.?

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your priorities. One of the TTL-capable YN flashes (e.g., YN-568EX) may feel like a better price/value ratio to you.

In going with Canon over YN, you typically get better components/assembly tolerances, and better compatibility, particularly in the future. If Canon messes with the flash protocol, they'll make sure their own gear is still going to work with the new protocol changes, but they probably don't care about breaking how YNs work. YN is reverse engineering the flash/camera protocol. And unlike Nissin or Metz (who also reverse-engineer), Yongnuo flashes have no firmware upgrade capabilities.

OTOH, Yongnuo also builds in features you won't find on the Canons: the YN-568EX, which is roughly comparable to a 430EX II, can swivel 360 degrees, has a sync port, "dumb" optical slave modes, Nikon CLS capability, and a recycle beep. The 430EXII does none of those things.

As one example of the compatibility issues, though--my 580EXII is fully commandable on my Powershot G9's hotshoe, as one would expect. Weirdly, my YN-568EX is not. It won't even fire. It will fire if I put radio triggers between the G9 and the 568EX (which is why I find it odd). YN targeted the current Canon dSLR hotshoe protocol, but has had issues with variants. There were "fixes" on the YN-568EX for compatibility with older camera bodies like the 5D classic and 20D.

How much any of this is worth to you, personally, though, is up to you, your priorities, what/how you shoot, and your budget.

gear replies, thanks guys. i know enough about lighting to make good images but not enough to make my life easier while doing it

that said, second sync and HSS are the two features most important to me. i dont care to have eTTL. i dont shoot events or in wildly changing lighting conditions so i have no problem with a manual approach.

assuming i get the YN triggers what would be the flash you'd recommend to me to get HSS and second curtain om my 5dii? also based on the reviews of the YN triggers it seems like i can get HSS out of my existing YN 460s, correct?

mike_311 wrote in post #15963283
...assuming i get the YN triggers what would be the flash you'd recommend to me to get HSS and second curtain om my 5dii?

Yongnuo only makes two flashes that are capable of HSS: The YN-568EX, and the YN-500EX. The 500EX has a lower guide number and is newer, so the 568 is more of a known quantity at the moment. There's a thread in this forum on the 568. You may also want to consider the Metz 50 AF-1, Nissin Di866ii, or Vivitar DF-483/Cactus AF50; they're all HSS-capable.

No. You can't get HSS out of a manual flash. What the YN-622s do is "tail-sync" (aka supersync or, in PocketWizard-speak, hypersync), where the flash fires at full power, and the exposure happens during the tail of the flash burst. I singularly failed to get it to work with my YN-560 and 5Dii (it worked ok with my 50D); it worked perfectly with my 580EX. Also, it does require using the PC sync port on the trigger, and iirc, the YN-460 doesn't have any kind of sync connection (I modded my YN-560 to add a 3.5mm sync port) so you'd probably need a hotshoe adapter. It's a bit more of a power-waster than HSS is, and HSS eats two stops all by itself.

thanks!