I have a pair of Nikon speedlights that use Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS). Cannon shooters call this AWL, but it’s the same idea, which is remote control of a speed light via optical signals sent from another flash. This can be from another flash in the hot shoe on the camera, or from the built-in flash on the SLR body itself. It allows you to alter power settings on remote flashes without walking over to them, and it’s very handy for doing strobist work.

The trouble is the cheapest CLS-enabled speedlight Nikon sells is the SB-700, at $329.00 USD. The older, less powerful, less feature-rich and discontinued SB-600 still sells for $250 when you find a deal on one at KEH. Private party sales (forums, ebay, craigslist) can run as low as $200 or so. This is still a lot of money for a flash Nikon stopped making years ago. If you are willing to step down, however, out of the realm of CLS control and rely on flashes that have decent optical slaves built in, you can get a new-in-box Yongnuo 560 (YN-560) for $65 if you look a little. The trouble with these is they are engineered down to a price. Some of the cost savings come from having a cheaper display on the back and lower power output from the name brand flashes, but some of the savings also come from the fact that they don’t really offer end-user support, the manuals aren’t… useful… and quality control has been reported by David Hobby (and many others) to be an issue.

However, at $65 each, you could get four of YN-560’s and still be just at the level of a single SB-600 from KEH. Statically speaking, you’re going to get a number of speedlights that work properly. My question, before ordering some, is “Will they work side-by-side with CLS flashes?”. We know the built in optical slaves should be able to suppress the TTL pre-flash, but how will it handle the CLS commander flashes? Most reviewers online are triggering them with RF transceivers, not optical slaves, and none of the ones I’ve seen triggering via optical are trying to also use CLS at the same time.

The answer is simple: if you use your CLS flashes in TTL mode and zero out the pop-up flash, so it’s not contributing to the exposure, you can run the YN-560 in “S2” all day long, and it works. Up and down the aperture and shutter speed range, every test I tried worked. However, trying to use “M” on the CLS channels never got the YN-560 to fire at the right time. Sadness.

The good news is there is an announced but unreleased flash that solves all these problems – the YN-565 supposedly does Canon and Nikon AWL/CLS in the same unit (even though the hot-shoe mounts are slightly different). No word on the price, however.