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Best photography flashes and strobes for beginners in 2022

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Flash can be a difficult topic to figure out for a new photographer. You know you need more light but which one do you get? Do you even need only one or should you get several? What type of photography flash should you get? How much power do you need? What are modifiers? Which one do I need? Do I really need to spend all that money on one or will the cheap ones do the job? Is there not just one light out there that I can use for everything? How do I connect everything up so that it all talks to each other?

All of these questions and more can make it pretty overwhelming if you’ve never used flash before. So, in this guide, we’re going to try to answer some of them and take a look at the variety of different flashes and strobes on the market. We’re going to try to help you figure out what light or lights you might want to get to start your flash journey and how different types of light might be better suited to different genres of photography.

Holiday Gift Guide – Best Flash and Video Lights of 2021

The season of giving is upon us – which becomes immediately obvious whenever you walk into a store and you’re overwhelmed by Whamageddon. If you want to avoid the Christmas music and prefer to do your shopping online, then have no fear, DIYP’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guides are here to rescue you with some of our favourite new releases of the year, as well as a few old favourites that always seem to find a place in our gear bags.

In this post, we’re going to be taking a look at lighting, but keep an eye out for upcoming guides featuring Tripods, Sliders & Gimbals, and other accessories and gadgets and be sure to check out our previous guide going over the best of this year’s new Cameras and lenses.

Yongnuo expands its full-frame Sony E mount prime lineup with the YN 50mm F1.8S DF DSM

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Yongnuo has announced its third full-frame lens in their Sony E-Mount prime lineup. The new Yongnuo YN 50mm F1.8S DF DSM expands the range to three, adding to the YN 35mm f2S DF DSM and the YN 85mm f1.8S DF DSM.

As with the other two, this is a relatively low budget lens with a price estimated to be around $300-350 when it hits the US. Of course, being made by a brand like Yongnuo, we kind of expect it to be fairly low budget. That being said, it does look like YN’s actually making their own lenses now and not simply copying Canon’s and sticking other mounts on them.

Yongnuo’s new Android-powered YN455 MFT camera sports a 5″ flip-up touchscreen LCD

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Yongnuo’s still on their Android-powered camera kick, and this time they seem to have brought some neat improvements, at least on the surface, over their previous attempts. Yongnuo joined the Micro Four Thirds group back in February of last year, so it’s no surprise they’re pursuing the mount. No word yet on whether or not this will extend beyond China this time, though.

According to a report on Photo Rumors, the Yongnuo YN455 comes with a 20-megapixel sensor that shoots 4K30p video, an 8 core 2.2Ghz CPU with 6GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage, although this is expandable by a further 256GB using a microSD card. On the rear, it sports an 8-megapixel selfie camera and a huge 5″ tilting touchscreen LCD.

Yongnuo has launched the YN RF 85mm f/1.8 – first 3rd party RF lens with a control ring

Yongnuo has officially announced their first RF mount lens. It’s the YN RF 85mm f/1.8R DF DSM and it’s actually equipped with a configurable control ring. Despite a number of other lens manufacturers producing RF mount compatible lenses, this marks the first 3rd party lens to actually include a control ring, which has so far been found exclusively on Canon’s own RF lenses.

A few reviews for the lens have already been popping up online over the last week or so, but the lens hadn’t officially been announced yet. It just kind of quietly slipped out. It’s the same optical formula as their 85mm f/1.8 for Sony FE, but in a whole new housing that shows some nice improvements over the FE mount design – like a weather sealing gasket.

Yongnuo announces 25mm f/1.7 lens for MFT and it appears to be an original design

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Yongnuo has announced a new 25mm f/1.7M autofocus lens for Micro Four Thirds. Shockingly, it appears to actually be an original design and not a copy of somebody else’s (like just about all of their DSLR lenses). Other than the it-had-so-much-potential Yongnuo YN450M, Yongnuo hasn’t released much since joining the Micro Four Thirds System Standard Group in February last year.

The new lens is nothing special, of course, being the MFT equivalent of a cheap nifty fifty. And Panasonic’s had an inexpensive 25mm f/1.7 for years. But Yongnuo is perhaps starting to take the system more seriously now. Interestingly, the photos on the Yongnuo product page show it attached to a Panasonic camera, and not their own YN450M.

Yongnuo updates its 5-year-old speedlight, launches the YN685 II for Nikon and Canon

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The Yongnuo YN685 speedlight was originally released back in 2015. It was one of the first on the market at the time to feature an integrated 2.4Ghz receiver, compatible with some of Yonguo’s triggers. It was quickly obsoleted once Godox hit the scene with their lithium-ion battery-powered speedlights, offering greater compatibility.

Well, Yongnuo has now released an update to the YN685. Not surprisingly, it’s called the Yongnuo YN685 II, but does it go far enough over the original to win back some of those customers it’s lost to Godox or to attract new photographers to the brand?

Check out these eight 3D printed photo & video tools designed to make your life a little easier

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I put off getting a 3D printer for the longest time. I didn’t want to get one just for the sake of having a new toy that I’d get bored with, so I held off getting one until I felt I had a genuine need for one. Now, I have five – the most recent of which are the Snapmaker 2.0 A350 and its predecessor, the Snapmaker Original, and I find them absolutely invaluable.

I’ve been using them recently to print a bunch of tools and accessories to help me with my photography and filmmaking. Some of them are workflow and organisation accessories while others are actual tools used to create content. So, here, I’m going to talk about some of the most useful things I’ve printed lately.

Yongnuo is developing another weird camera and this time it’s “modular”

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Modular cameras are not a new idea, but as the world switched from film to digital, modular systems mostly disappeared for photographers – unless you count being able to swap lenses as “modularity”. Fuji is working on one, but other than that, there isn’t much out there in the way of modular cameras (not counting cinema cameras).

It looks like, surprisingly, Yongnuo is looking to change that, though, after filing a patent describing a rather strange-looking modular mirrorless camera. The patent was filed back in 2019 while the world was still waiting to see what was happening with this oddity and it’s very peculiar Android-powered camera, but was just approved and published recently.

Yongnuo just announced a new 35mm f/2 lens for full-frame Sony E mount

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Yongnuo has announced a new YN35mm F2S DF DSM lens for full-frame Sony E Mount cameras. It appears to not just be their existing 35mm f/2 for DSLRs with an extended barrel, either, but a completely new lens design. Whether or not it’s their own design or they’ve “borrowed” somebody else’s, I don’t know, but this one does seem as if it may be designed specifically for mirrorless cameras.

The lens is constructed of 9 elements in 8 groups including one aspherical element and one low dispersion element. The elements have a Nano-multilayer coating which Yongnuo says helps to improve light transmittance while suppressing ghosting and flare.

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