TI_CRD_125

I needed to buy an on camera flash for some work I am doing.
I really don't like these on camera things even though they are all the rage now with people that think manually setting an apeture and shutter speed value on their camera and flash is too difficult. My 25+ y/o Metz hammer heads do me just fine but unfortunately, are too big for the underwater bags I'm using.

I couldn't bring myself to paying $600 for the genuine canon units having used them before and being particularly unimpressed with them. I heard about these Chinese Things and read some good Reviews. The place I have bought some other cheap studio lighting gear from Which has all been excellent) had a special on them so I picked one up for $160 to give it a go.

The brand Is Yongnuo and the flash is their top of the line, Blow your nose, wipe your backside, E-TTL yada yada ripoff of canons original. The Yongnuo is YN565EX Which is compatible with the Canon 580EX and the Nikoff SB900.

I have only played around the house with the 565 over the last few days but to say I am impressed with the thing is a huge understatement.

The light quality that comes out of this thing is the best I have ever seen on a portable unit and that includes the Uber exy and somewhat rare Quantum Q series units.
While a lot of on camera flashes produce harsh edged shadows and have a very rapid light fall off, these things Illuminate beautifuly. The foreground subject is perfectly lit ( much better than any canon unit I have used by a country mile!) and the backgrounds stay detailed for meters behind as well. This is in stark contrast to the canon units which are harsh and have terrible fall off.

The colour balance of the 565 is also the best I have ever seen. It's dead neutral. All the canon units I have used have been blue as hell and take a custom white balance in the camera to make them look something like they should.
I also find with every canon unit I have used the actual exposure the things put out needs to have compensation dialed in to get the images right.
The Yonguno is spot on exposure and colour balance wise straght out of the box.

They of course have the normal swivel and bounce and the built in flip down wide angle diffuser and white bounce card but even straight out of the head, the quality of the output is fantastic!
They are very much like the Canon/ Nikoff units in look, layout and features. They even have the wireless remote/ auto feature that allows TTL sync with other units.

I think the wireless is the same as the canon system and only an infra red setup that isn't worth a pinch in daylight but I guess that's why they make Pocket Wizzards. The battery life is quoted as low as 100 flashes which would of course be full dumps but it does have the external battery terminal that allows you to run from 12 batteries instead of 4.
The battery life is quoted as Alakalines so if using Nickel metals you should do a bit better.
Recycle time for a flat dump is 3 seconds which the unit seems to do easily even with NiMh cells with quite a few frames on them already. The Flash is also compatible with a Quantum turbo battery which would have full recylce coming in at 1 sec or less.

Pretty much the 565's do everything the OEM units do but at a fraction of the price.
I don't know how well these things will last but the canon units certainly aren't without their reliability issues amoung others. If the quality of the compents on the 565 is as good as the quality of the light output, these things will become redundant long before they wear out.

Chinese stuff always has a stigma to it but I have to say I'm fast getting over that thanks to products like this.
The parameter I always used to put on cheaper alternatives is dividing the price of the original by the knockoffs and then asking if X units will last as long as the one original. At the price these things go for, they are a bargain for sure and I get the feeling are probably just as good quality wise.
Performance wise, they are a light that would justify a $600 price tag as far as I'm concerned and the canons would be more accurately price pointed at 160 bux.

It should also be remembered that the Canon units have been far from trouble free. There have been a lot of problems with these things over time and I seem to remember at least one recall/ free repair being issued on them.
I suspect if they had the Yongnu name on them they would be labeled as crap but because they are canon and are associated with a quality brand and the marketing influence behind it, the flaws get over looked or passed off as unusual. From what I know and have experienced, issues with the Canons are not that unusual at all.

I have tried the thing on my good camera's as well as the toy ones and it works perfectly on both and is fully compatible. You can ajust the custom functions of the flash through the camera which I find easier than trying to work out the symbols on the flash LCD.

Along with the flash I also got a cheap little softbox/ diffuser that goes over the head and is secured with a bit of elastic strap and velcro. I have borrowed one from a mate and was highly impressed with it on the canon 580 which personally I would never pay $600 for. It improved the light output on the canon dramatically and softens an already great illumination on the Yongnuo. Indoors, the output is almost shadowless.

The ONLY complaint I have about these units is the name. Trying to pronounce it is the only thing I don't like about them.

For anyone that wants an on camera flash for general ( or Pro) use, I'd highly reccomend the Yongnuo 565.
You can bolt the things on and they are ready to go or you can get up to your eyeballs in the custom functions, wireless TTL setups and more.
The price is unbeatable, The quality of the light out put probably is as well and certainly the best I have seen from an on camera light and it has every feature you could want including full compatability with the canon units.

To avoid any potential for inaccuracy contained in my review – real or unintended - I have decided to amend it.

Since first writing my review I have considered what I really wanted to achieve from the diesel chip review; ie: focus on what extra, if anything, I could get from the Chip It performance chip. I do not think that the amendments that I have made to the review detract from that intention.

One of the benefits of modern diesels is the ability to use performance chips, similar to what has been available for many years now for petrol vehicles. Diesel chip technology is far more complex than that for petrol engines because of the way that diesels produce power; air/fuel ratios for diesels can vary from 15:1 to 150:1, compared to petrol engines where the ideal ratio is 14.7:1, with only a few points either way for acceptable rich/lean configurations.

The original diesel chips provided increased fuelling to provide additional performance and one of the first chips that I encountered was the Dtronic for the Di 3.0lt. The Dtronic was, I believe, a South African product, but it was fraught with lots of quality control issues and many units brought to Australia failed to deliver any performance improvements whatsoever. Eventually, the Dtronic faded from the Australian scene and around the same time, new chip technology was emerging from Europe, where diesel technology was many years in advance of what we had available in Australia. Most of the fuel only chips come/came from basically the same basic design and were packaged and marketed under different brand names. Under the skin, they pretty much all looked and performed the same.

Variations began to emerge and the systems became more sophisticated, especially with the introduction of common rail diesels, where you could control not only the fuel pressure, but also the electronic injector pulses, as well as boost. These diesel systems seem to be advancing, like anything else, and more options are likely in the future. The one thing that ties all of these current chips together is that they are all piggy-back systems, that is, they work with the diesel ECU to modify what's happening at any point in time, they do not entirely replace the ECU, as is one option that can be done with petrol engines using a Motec, Haltech, Wolf etc ECU. Another option with petrol engines is ECU re-flashing or entire EPROM replacement. The former is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows somewhat greater options in tune, though in a much coarser fashion, depending on the nature of the chip.

Some say that these piggy-back chips are but a hack and advocate that a complete ECU replacement, an ECU re-flash (ie direct reprogram of the ECU), or the EPROM replacement, is the purist way ahead - were such available. In a sense this is true, but the latter option would mean that each and every installation would require extensive dyno tuning etc, to achieve optimum results, and why would you not want anything else, if replacing the ECU entirely or re-flashing your existing ECU? This of course would mean significant additional cost to the owner, as every vehicle would need to be carefully tuned depending on its configuration and idiosyncracies. No two diesels would be tuned alike. At least with the piggy-back systems, you get a near enough, which is more often than not, good enough result.

So what diesel chip is best? That's not an easy answer, as it depends on what you're after, what mods you have done or are prepared to do and how much time and effort you are prepared to put into getting optimum results, as well as what you are prepared to pay. What this leads me to now is a review I did a while back on two chips; one a well established and well regarded chip, and another relatively new and considerably different chip in design and implementation. I undertook this review purely because I was cynical about some of the claims of the newcomer chip and was handed a challenge to compare one against the other. I already owned the DP Chip and was more than happy with the way that it performed and accepted the challenge. Chip It sent me a complete unit with no caveats whatsoever so that I could undertake a comparison.

I was somewhat hesitant to post this but, as it's already appeared on the other forum, for members that come here directly, it may be informative. So, if you do decide to read the review, do so in its entirety, don't skip anything, as it will inevitably lead you to the wrong conclusions. It's long, but it can't be anything else if it's to be complete. Also understand that the review is completely independent and I gained no favours undertaking the review; I paid for chips (though as a matter of disclosure, I did get the Chip It for effectively trade price, which I appreciate, considering the time and money I'd spent on the review). Finally, both chips provide positive results for your diesel, but they do it in different ways and that's what you have to understand when choosing a diesel chip. Here's the review link:

http://www.australia....au/chipit.html

Cheers

Ray

Yet another variation on a theme.....

I ran power from the second battery to the rear yesterday for a fridge and whatever else. By spending an hour or so making the panel blank and sourcing the voltmeter and Merit sockets, I saved around $120 compared with commercial equivalents.

Panel is a piece of plastic around 2-3mm thick. I recycled an old document tray but anything you can get your hands on will be fine. Needs to be thin enough that the clips on the meter, switch and original clip will go all the way though.

Cable is two runs of automotive 6mm back to a fuse panel under the passenger kick plate. I also have a totally separate run along the chassis of 6 B&S for the Anderson plug to the camper.



Voltmeter is a two wire unit off ebay for about $7 delivered. Jaycar sell the same one for $25. When buying, it's easiest if it is a 2 wire, self powered meter rather than having to have a separate power supply. Switch is momentary action. I bought a 2-way thinking the existing lighter socket was easily accessible so I could measure the main battery voltage but it isn't.




Adrian

Yet another variation on a theme.....

I ran power from the second battery to the rear yesterday for a fridge and whatever else. By spending an hour or so making the panel blank and sourcing the voltmeter and Merit sockets, I saved around $120 compared with commercial equivalents.

Panel is a piece of plastic around 2-3mm thick. I recycled an old document tray but anything you can get your hands on will be fine. Needs to be thin enough that the clips on the meter, switch and original clip will go all the way though.

Cable is two runs of automotive 6mm back to a fuse panel under the passenger kick plate. I also have a totally separate run along the chassis of 6 B&S for the Anderson plug to the camper.



Voltmeter is a two wire unit off ebay for about $7 delivered. Jaycar sell the same one for $25. When buying, it's easiest if it is a 2 wire, self powered meter rather than having to have a separate power supply. Switch is momentary action. I bought a 2-way thinking the existing lighter socket was easily accessible so I could measure the main battery voltage but it isn't.




Adrian

Yet another variation on a theme.....

I ran power from the second battery to the rear yesterday for a fridge and whatever else. By spending an hour or so making the panel blank and sourcing the voltmeter and Merit sockets, I saved around $120 compared with commercial equivalents.

Panel is a piece of plastic around 2-3mm thick. I recycled an old document tray but anything you can get your hands on will be fine. Needs to be thin enough that the clips on the meter, switch and original clip will go all the way though.

Cable is two runs of automotive 6mm back to a fuse panel under the passenger kick plate. I also have a totally separate run along the chassis of 6 B&S for the Anderson plug to the camper.



Voltmeter is a two wire unit off ebay for about $7 delivered. Jaycar sell the same one for $25. When buying, it's easiest if it is a 2 wire, self powered meter rather than having to have a separate power supply. Switch is momentary action. I bought a 2-way thinking the existing lighter socket was easily accessible so I could measure the main battery voltage but it isn't.




Adrian

The standard nav/av system fitted to TI models since the GU7 is the Eclipse AVN726EA. Generally quite a good unit, particularly after the firmware and map updates. One frustration though is that there are no steering wheel controls.

As the buttons are very small, and all look the same, quick changes to volume are hit-and-miss. A solution that's worked quite well is to get hold of the Eclipse remote ($15-20), buy a programable steering wheel mounted IR remote off ebay ($11) and make a tiny reflector to reliably direct the IR beam onto the sensor. Pics below.

Overall arrangement


Steering wheel remote - held on by a rubber strap which makes at surprisingly solid; mounted "upside down" as all the ones on ebay are designed for LHD vehicles


Headunit with reflector


Closeup of the relector - 12mm aluminium angle filed to shape and stuck to the unit with double sided tape


This may work for other headunits with IR remotes

Adrian