M400: I got 60 shots out of it. After the first minute it started to progressively slow down the recycle time to around 8/9s. After 2 minutes it also displayed the Temperature icon warning on the LCD screen.

The first thing you’ll notice is how powerful the i40 is. A built in unit normally doesn’t go beyond guide number 10 to 12 (meters). The smaller units built by Sony and Nikon have guide numbers of around 20. The Nissin i40 outclasses them all with a guide number of 40. The flash is powered by 4 AA batteries. That helps the battery life, makes the flash charge fast but does make the unit quite heavy. With the batteries the flash weighs about 370 grams. The whole body of the unit is filled with those 4 batteries. Makes me wonder where they have put the electronics? As you can see the i40 has got a lot of functionality, so it can adjust to almost every situation. Because of all the functionality It will appeal to both novice and more advanced photographers. Unfortunately my Sony A7 doesn’t have a built in wireless commander. So I didn’t get a chance to test the wireless TTL functionality. I also found that the lamp recycling time is not always constant and that can be an issue. On the first assignments I did with the i40 (including a 12 hour wedding), it worked really well and I changed the batteries quite late in the day. I mainly used the 12-40mm and the trio worked like a charm. With other events where I used longer telephoto lenses it had some more difficulty. The recycle time could take quite a long, even three seconds or more. I always used the same NiMH 2100m AA batteries. It is important to make sure that the batteries are fully charged for every new assignment. To use HSS on Canon, Sony and Micro Four Thirds (Olympus / Panasonic) cameras you must activate the HSS function on your Nissin Air 10s Commander. Press and hold " H↯" on the Air 10s selector dial until the HSS icon " H↯" appears on the display. To deactivate HSS, press " H↯" on the selector dial again until the HSS icon disappears from the display. To use HSS on Nikon, and Fujifilm cameras you must activate HSS from the camera's flash menu. You do not need to change any other Air 10s or flash settings.

Kenro announces the Nissin i40 Flash and Video Light

The i40 comes with a huge carrying case, about the size of a Hasselblad body, and a carabiner to carry it on your belt or clipped to the outside of your camera bag. It holds the flash, a slip-on diffuser like a mini Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce, and a table mount with a 1/4x20 tripod thread. I can’t imaging using that huge case with the dainty i40, but it’s there if you want it. The table mount is useful but will stay in the studio while the flash itself goes roaming.

The higher guide number means that if you capture a subject at f/4 and ISO 100, the i60A will give you a correct exposure up to 15 metres (at full power) and 200mm. The i40 and M400 will manage optimal brightness up 10 metres and 105mm. So overall the i60A can cover a longer distance than the other two units and can concentrate the light at a narrower angle of view as well. SF - Slave Film. synchronizes to the traditional single flash system. The master flash is to be set at manual mode. Studio lighting system synchronizes to this mode. This mode is also available for open flash, and for a standard flash in the market. The i40 has a Guide Number of 40 at 105mm which is good for this kind of flash. If you increase the ISO you can also increase the power which isn’t a problem because today’s Micro Four Thirds cameras can handle high ISOs well. The i40 covers a focal range of 24mm to 105mm (35mm equivalent so this mean 12 to 53mm). It can be expanded to 16mm with the built-in diffuser. The flash can also work in manual mode and you use the flash compensation dial to choose between 9 different levels of power. However the dial only has full-stop increments which can be a limit for those who like to fine-tune their exposure. Also in manual mode the distance can be set manually using the different colours of the main LED light on the rear (if you slide the fill-in reflector up, there is a caption that indicates the corresponding colours as you can see on the picture below). You have to press and hold the power on/off button to change colour and therefore the focal length. I spoke to the folks at Nissin and the best answer I got was that they were not sure. And they do not make a cord. The best they could suggest would be going with one of their bigger units and an accessory remote trigger. My whole point in going M4/3 was to get a smaller, lighter working outfit, so that was not a great help.The Nissin i40 has a flash output of GN40 at 105mm.The zoom range auto adjusts from 24 -105mm. The flash comes equipped with a built in diffuser that gives coverage for a 16mm lens. A soft box is included for softening up the light output and reducing shadows. Please refer to the following Nissin compatibility chart for the latest camera compatibility information (.pdf file). When pairing the Air 10s Commander with the Nissin i60A, Di700A, and Air R Receiver, the Air 10s will automatically default to radio wireless channel 2. To ensure proper communication between your Air 10s and flashes, confirm that your flashes are set to the Auto channel (recommended), or manually set them to channel 2. If you are experiencing radio interference on channel 2, then choose another channel for the network (choose from channels 2-8). The Metz M400 and Nissin i40 rely on optical communication. The M400 can act as a Master or Slave (TTL and Manual modes) depending on the camera system and has an additional Servo function that works in Manual mode only. With the Servo mode you can choose to sync with or without pre-flash and use a function called Learn. The latter enables automatic adjustment to the camera’s flash unit for example to reduce the red-eye effect.