I received my order from Amazon/Cameta Camera late yesterday by UPS shipping.I unpackaged everything and found no physical visible damage.My first task was to top off the charge on the batteries.The instructions stated that a red LED light on the charger would come on indicating a fast charge was in operation and it would later change to green indicating that it had switched to a trickle charge ,after 10 hours there was still no green light but a second light was now on glowing dimly along with the first light.The 1st light was called Charge I and the second light was called Charge II....neither of these lights were mentioned on the instruction label affixed to the back of the charger. The batteries were very hot to the touch,,,,,,,,,there were no warnings about how long the batteries should remain on the charger.It appears the charger/instruction was mislabeled.
I removed the batteries and installed them in the flash unit as directed.I might add at this point the battery compartment door on this flash unit was a very poor design,hard to operate in both opening and closing ,it was very poorly made and was certainly a failure waiting to happen as the slightest operator error would cause it to either break or it would jam in place.
I attemped to test the flash in the sequence described in the instruction booklet.It stated the "On Ready" indicator light would come on when the power switch was turned to on,it did not but the ETTL light came on instead,by the way there was not any verbage that stated anything about the ETTL light coming on at this time.There was some changing of status going on on the LCD Monitor but stopped in a few seconds.I wanted to check the functionality of the LCD illuminator as described in the booklet.It stated the illuminator would come on when the light key was tapped and stay on for 5 seconds.It did not.............I decided next to test the flash as described in the booklet.The flash did appear to work properly.The instructions stated that if the flashgun discharges to wait until the ready light comes back on,I assume this meant before you could retest or take another exposure,it didn't denote either.It is really insignifcant at this point as the ready light never did come back on after waiting for 3 minutes.I thought maybe the batteries were discharged so I recharged them on a different charger,reinstalled them in the unit,the ready light never did come back on.
The spec sheet states that the unit will recycle in .5 to 9 seconds,that certainly didn't happen either,just another mal function of this unit.
The mounting shoe and lock ring on this unit is of plastic material which is certainly not a good design as an inadvertant slight bump may very well cause it to snap off.
I thought next to look at the diffuser and reflector plate.This design once again is very poorly thought out.The necessary method of opening/putting the diffuser into operation is to hook your fingernail or some object under the leading edge and pull it out,very cumbersome.It would probably function as engineered but one would need to be careful in pulling it out and returning it for storage as it is only captive to keep it from falling out and not positioned in a slide groove for smooth operation.
I decided at this point I had seen enough.There are many other functions available on this unit but I don't want to waste my time and returned it to the shipping box for return,unfortunately it is Saturday and I must wait until Monday to talk with customer service for return and credit instructions.I will contact sales this morning and see if they can get me started on this,I will in the meantime be shopping for a 430EX II.
In summary I would like to say this unit in my opinion is very sub standard and very poorly designed/engineered.Whats the old adage,you get what you pay for,,,,,it certainly has proven to be a truism in this case.
dick
It's great as a slave or in TTL mode, but geez.
Anyone know if this is covered under their warranty?
