Nissin Di622 Review

Mainly for the benefit of Southampton University Photographic Society members, but I know there isn't a decent review of this flashgun anywhere on the web, so I've kept things nice and general for everyones benefit. This is rather long and wordy, if you want a quick summary, head to the Roundup at the bottom of the page. Leave a comment if there's anything you want to suggest.

When Kenro first mentioned they were distributing Nissin flashguns in the UK again, I was mildly surprised, since I already own 2 Nissin 360TW's I bought on Ebay after getting into off camera lighting, courtesy of the excellent Strobist site, and since I hadn't seen anything about them, had assumed they were one of the many companies that failed during the digital revolution.

Now not only had they made a welcome return, but the product they have used to kick start it is a rather well specified and keenly priced flashgun, the Di622, with an RRP of £149. I've been looking for a nice Canon fit semi-pro flashgun for a while now, especially one I can use for off camera stuff as easily as on camera. With the built in manual settings, optical remote triggering and uncluttered interface I was hoping this could be exactly what I've been looking for.



I'll start with the technical specs, mainly taken from the Kenro site, but with some bits from the instructions and my own personal usage thrown in for extra flavour;

Specs

• Guide Number: 44m (144ft) at 105mm zoom ISO 100
• Zoom Head: 24mm- 105mm (auto set)
• ETTL and iTTL Auto Exposure
• Auto Zoom Function 24-105mm (16mm with diffusion panel supplied)
• Bounce and Rotating Head.
  
• Supplied with built-in wide angle diffuser and catch light reflector
• 6 step manual power (1/32nd - full power)
• Built in wireless remote flash slave (optical)
  
• Power source: 4-AA size batteries
  
• Recycle time of 6 Seconds with Alkaline batteries, 4 Seconds with NiMH Batteries
• Number of Flashes: Approx 200 (type of batteries not specified)
  
• AF Assist Light: High Power LED
• Energy Saving Modes
  
• Sleep mode: After 30 seconds
• Supports Slow Shutter Sync, Red Eye Reduction and Rear Curtain Sync on Nikon cameras only (according to the manual)
• Includes protective pouch and flash stand

Initial Impressions
The box it comes in is well sized and efficiently packed, containing the flash itself in a plastic wrapper inside the fabric pouch, and a two sided sheet-style manual in English and Japanese packed in a small compartment beneath with a hot shoe stand.

Accessories Included
The manual is in good English with the odd, but not uncommon spelling mistake where they've been a little ambitious (e.g. 'Nomenclature') and the odd grammatical error. It is perfectly readable, however and gives a good overview not just of the flashgun, but some good tips applicable to any flashgun, like using a fill in reflector and flash exposure locking. It has decent illustrations throughout, but no real life photos. There are tables at the end of the manual sheet with specs for things such as battery life (200-1500 flashes, apparently. At least they quoted the lower estimate on the website), flash duration and AF assist range. There is also a GN table giving the range at specified Power Levels and Zoom Positions.

The pouch is similar to the little pouches you get with ear bud headphones (especially Sony ones) and is well made, with a flocked fluffy exterior and a plasticy fabric interior. I'd be tempted to turn it inside out so the fluffy bit was on the inside, protecting the flash, but the normal lining seems soft enough. It has a little blue tag with 'Nissin' printed on it, and closes using two opposing string loops, relying on friction to keep it closed. It is more than big enough for the unit, possibly with a little room for gels or other thin accessories, but thats all.

The Stand is large and well made in solid plastic with the same matt surface effect as on the main unit. It almost looks like it has been made for a much larger, heavier unit, as it has a large stable footprint and would be very hard to push over with the unit attached, almost overkill for this small and lightweight flashgun. On the other hand, as one of the selling points is the off camera abilities of this flash, the stand is very useful as an off camera support. It has a metal tripod socket in the bottom, for mounting on a light stand or tripod, but those considering this probably have better brackets already. Nice to have it there, though.

The Flashgun
Right, on to the main point of the exercise. The flash itself is small and lightweight, even with batteries installed. In fact, it weighs about the same with 4 Alkaline batteries as an empty Canon 550EX. The battery door is fiddly to begin with, but becomes much easier with a small amount of practice and the battery orientation is very clearly indicated next to the slots. I can see with only small amounts of use that the batteries will be very quick to replace.

The rotating head is a little stiff initially, but should work more easily with use. There are no locking buttons, instead it relies on resistance to lock into specific positions (vertically 45, 60, 75 and 90 degrees, and horizontally 30, 60 and 90 degrees anticlockwise, and 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 and 180 degrees clockwise). It locks with a nice mechanical click in the horizontal direction, and a rather rubbery squeak in the vertical, but it still held very firmly. It will still fire in between the locking points, so you can in theory point it anywhere.

The flash has a diffusion screen and a pull out white reflector above the head, similar to the 580EX Canon models, which automatically set the zoom level to its lowest setting to give the most diffuse output. On the bottom it has a plastic shoe with a screwing ring-type lock, that seems to work very well, although it can be fiddly to tighten onto the stand provided.

The back is where the magic happens, but its surprising how easy it is to operate the major functions without the now-ubiquitous LCD panel. The power button (bottom right) turns on the unit when held down for 2 seconds, and another 3 second hold powers the unit off again. The mode button (bottom left) switches from the default TTL mode to the manual power mode, and subsequent presses cycle the power down the scale from highest to lowest power, then back to TTL. The Pilot button lights when the flash is ready to fire, but according to the manual the GN of the test fire is only 10m at ISO 100 (35mm setting) when in TTL mode. In Manual, it fires at the indicated power.

To activate the optical wireless slave, you hold the mode button for 3 seconds, and the manual power level will flash every second on the selected power setting. Power level selection is via the mode button, the same as with on camera use.

The most interesting part of the flash is the novel 'power saving' system, whereby the flash will automatically keep itself in a low power standby until the camera requires it. After 30 seconds of non use when attached to a camera, it drops into a 5 second 'blip' mode, where it keeps the capacitor charged and flashes the current mode every 5 seconds. If the flash isn't attached to a camera, or the camera is turned off or in standby, the flash will drop into this mode after only 5 seconds. It will then sit in this mode for up to 5 mins before turning itself off completely. However, this doesn't discharge the capacitor entirely, so powering back on takes only seconds as the capacitor is topped back up.

So is it the perfect flash?
Well, yes and no. There are a few niggles I've found so far:

There's no manual setting for the zoom level, its automatic in TTL or widest in Manual, thats it.

You can't power the flash off directly in its standby mode, you have to wake it up, then power it off.

The optical remote doesn't trigger from any old source, it only triggers using the TTL on board flash (or hot shoe flashgun) on the SLR. this means you can't use another flash to trigger it unless its on an SLR and TTL. I can't get it to trigger using the pilot test on my Nissin 360TW, for example. This might be good to avoid accidental discharges though. (Having said this, I am trying to get a Nikon specific flash to work with a Canon SLR, so it might just be that they won't talk properly).

Roundup
In conclusion, I think the features, simplicity, lightness and power saving features more than make up for the lack of manual zoom head modification. You can always just snoot it off camera if you really need to reduce the falloff. Considering I bought the flashgun for £103.50, with next working day delivery included, its probably the cheapest flashgun of its power and features available without looking for second hand.

Also, for Strobist people's benefit, I couldn't get the Nikon fit unit to work with the PT-04 Ebay Radio Triggers, and it has no PC port for alternative triggering.

It was a nice surprise to get a pouch and stand with the unit, and the manual explains things well and goes into more detail than strictly necessary, without being too wordy.

Oh, and having had the thing on in the background while writing this, the 5 second 'peep' as the capacitor is topped up in standby mode can get pretty irritating. Apart from those little things, I think this flashgun is one of the best in its price bracket and is more than a match for the equivalently priced (at least at RRP) Canon 430EX.

Rich (VP)
richard.uni@gmail.com