Review on YONGNUO YN560-III-USA Speedlite Flash with Built-in 2.4-GHz 📸 Receiver for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, GN58, US Warranty (Black) by William Mathis

I am a hobbyist with a Sony A6000, Panasonic GX1 and RX100 (original model, without hot shoe). I bought this flash because it's a lot cheaper than native auto flashes and based on the published specs it produces the same or more light. Not automatically, of course, but it's a very small hurdle, especially if you're using ILC. Since the A6000's multipurpose hot shoe doesn't always work with standard hot shoe devices, I use Yongnuo's pop-up flash to trigger and it works great! When photographing indoor portraits, I can stick to a low ISO and get sharp shots in good lighting. It's strong enough to bounce off the ceiling so I can barely cast shadows. With the GX1, I can attach the Yongnuo directly to the hot shoe and it recognizes it perfectly. Out of curiosity, I tried activating Yongnuo with the RX100 retractable flash and it worked just as well. To work around the hot shoe issue, I bought a couple of adapters to try and attach the flash to the camera. As a result, I had two adapters: Sony ADP-MAA and Pixel TF-325. I was then able to install Yongnuo on the adapters and the camera was able to trigger the flash directly. The only problem is that it's quite heavy despite being relatively durable. However, it comes with a stand so you can place it on any flat surface or mount it on a tripod if needed. With 4 AA batteries I was able to get about 100 shots at 1/8 power. Next purchase will be a battery and wireless trigger to take things to the next level! Update: After a bit of research, it turned out that there is a thin layer of black paint on the Sony hot shoe which causes some devices, like this flash, to not be able to ground themselves. Using a nail file (sandpaper will do), I scraped some paint off the underside of the left and right edges of the Sony hot shoe, being careful not to scratch anything else. And it worked great. Now I can mount this flash directly on the a6000 and it fires every time. I added a YN560-TX to the mix for even more flexibility. Now I've removed my flash from the camera but I can control all of its settings from the remote and of course trigger it.