Jinbei announces new Canon RT compatible flash

For the budget minded, or those just looking to add more guns without paying $600.00 each, the new Jinbei Caler 600EX-RT looks like a fantastic bang for your buck.

Incorporating many more cloned features from the Canon original than competing YounNuo RT flashes, the Jinbei may be very appealing indeed. (as for looks, it is a dead ringer. It even looks like the menu system will be virtually identical, making it a near completely interchangeable "bodysantcher-pod-clone" )

More at Flash Havoc;
http://flashhavoc.com …caler-600ex-rt-speedlite/


I've never used a Jinbei flash (to the best fo my knowledge) so I have no opinion on reliability vs. Canon or YongNuo. I'd be curious how it stacks up?

Even if you get only 30% of the life of the Canon flash, you still save $$

Jinbei really need to create a line of hotshoe and studio flashes with are compatible with a single radio system, like what phottix and godox has done. They make some good products but they really need to streamline their products so people are more willing to buy into their system.

I suppose I could say the same for Yongnuo

gjl711 wrote in post #18119006
Even if you get only 30% of the life of the Canon flash, you still save $$

What's the life of a Canon flash? I have never had a Canon flash go bad and I have owned 30 over the last 30 years. I buy 3 Yongnuo YN600EX's a year ago, with your line of reasoning "for $130 if I could just get a few years it will be worth it", and less than 2 months of use and 2 of 3 are bad. So I spent $390 for essentially 1 YN600 that I now have no faith in. More than 4 years later my 8 Canon 600's are still going strong. So I got less than 1/48 the life of a Canon flash out of my Yongnuo's. I paid $600 for my Canon's so my Yongnuo's should have cost $12.50 to get the same value over buying Canon. That is if all my Canon flashes suddenly died today. You can buy a used 600EX-RT for around $300 which I would consider a much better value than buying a comparable third party flash new for $130.

How do these companies get away with direct copies... even down to the look? It astounds me that these are even allowed to be imported into the USA. I can see designing something that is BETTER in technology than the Canon flash and that looks different in some way but the laziness of these counterfeiters just blows me away. If I was Canon I'd be pissed.

I have 3 Canon 600's and 2 Yongnuo's. I bought the YN's as an experiment and they have worked Ok so far. I was definitely conflicted when I made the purchase but really wanted to see for myself what the quality was like. I also agree that the YN's are very cheap construction and they are the first to be used if conditions are a bit sketchy and I don't want to risk the Canon units. I dropped one onto a carpeted floor from about a foot and the pull out reflector snapped off so the construction is definitely lacking.

If Canon had a lower MSRP on their flash units perhaps they wouldn't get knocked off?

agv8or wrote in post #18120905
What's the life of a Canon flash? I have never had a Canon flash go bad and I have owned 30 over the last 30 years. I buy 3 Yongnuo YN600EX's a year ago, with your line of reasoning "for $130 if I could just get a few years it will be worth it", and less than 2 months of use and 2 of 3 are bad. So I spent $390 for essentially 1 YN600 that I now have no faith in.

My experience with Yongnuo flashes has been more fortunate than yours. Did you attempt to exercise your warranty before you declared it a loss?

PineBomb wrote in post #18120975
My experience with Yongnuo flashes has been more fortunate than yours. Did you attempt to exercise your warranty before you declared it a loss?

The problem is that I bought my YN's from several different vendors and did not keep track of which went to whom so I had no real idea of who to return it to. Anyway the cost and hassle to return the items was going to be more than it was worth so I chalked it up to a bad experience and lesson learned not to buy Yongnuo flash products in the future.