Vivitar DF400MZ
So I’ll finish up yesterday’s quick run on the Vivitar’s.
Build: The 285HV feels like a relic out of the cold war. This is good in a way since the knobs and especially the zoom head are easy to identify and change. The DF400 feels pretty plastickiy. I’ve actually already dropped the DF400 from two feet or so by accident and it seemed to fire sprodically whenever I pressed the trigger and it was in shutter or aperture mode and was mounted on-camera. Like a bad rash the behavior has seemed to vanish.
Unique to the 285HV: An external power plug to add the flash to a Lumedyne or Quantum battery is a big plus. The 285HV also has a Vivitar plug for hooking directly into a wireless unit. It never shuts off once its on. The hotshoe has a unique lever instead of a wheel to turn but works effortlessly. Negatively, the 285HV also features the calculus exposure wheel – I used to think I was smart until trying to decipher the numbers on it.
Unique to the DF400: A fancy pants lcd display plus E-TTL or i-TTL support. The DF400 also features a optical slave, while flaky at over 15 feet and depending on line of sight to its front red sensor, which was pretty reliable under 10 feet. Unfortunately you can’t have the slave operating and recieve a signal to fire the flash from the shoe at the same time. So there is no optical and radio redundancy for this unit.
The flash will also shut down if not used for 3 minutes and you can’t wake it up with a remote trigger. A useful ‘OFF’ is printed on the display when it turns off to taunt you. If you keep the optical slave on the DF400 never shuts off. I forgot about it in the living room and the flash was still ready to rock six hours later. The failsafe work-around for the unit powering down is to put the DF400 in the camera hotshoe and let the E-TTL signal wake the flash up (useless?) without turning it off then on. The DF400 shoe was designed for pterodactyl’s; it is a pain to turn and has notches in it.
Recharge to full: Around 5-6 seconds on both flashes with Eneloops.
Power: Tested at 10 feet at full power with an Alienbee B800 and both flashes at their widest settings against plain white muslin. The 285HV saw about 1.1 stops less power than the AB800 (a bit over 50% loss). The DF400 lost around .1 to .2 stops of power compared to the 285HV, only a marginal loss.
Analysis ?
I really wanted to like the 285HV, but the dumb gel holder just isn’t a compatible size with my other 540ez and 420ex flashes. If Vivitar just revamped the 285HV with an optical slave and smaller head I would have been pretty joyous.
The newer DF400 only looks like a survivor if I use it primarily as a optical slave with a built-in flash. Manual slave flashes with 5 power levels are fine by me. Canon really needs to release a flash with an optical slave option to catch up with Nikon. I suppose the DF400 is still an alright value buy at $100 if you don’t want to get a 580ex. I’m keeping mine for now.
Here’s another useful thread. It seems the DF400 is the same unit and is rebranded as several other names. One more note; the test button on the DF400 is a real pain to push. You really got to mash that button down to get a repeatable test fire.
Update: 1/3/2010
Sold my Vivitar and moved to 430 ex2′s.
September 4, 2008 at 11:14 pmClevaTreva
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Thanks for this.
On the sleep mode. Does pressing the light button wake it up?
If so, will putting a small ball of duct tape on the button and then another flat piece over it to press this down before switching it on (and thus leave it permanently pressed down) defeat the sleep mode, as it does on some other flashes?
September 6, 2008 at 4:50 pmEric Spehr
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Good idea, I tried with duct tape and some plastic bits to hold the light button down and failed. I could not keep enough tension on the button to keep it held down.
Being bored though I did manually hold down the light button by hand and it still turned off – although when I let go of the light button it woke up. So I suppose the good electrical geeks could find a quick 1 wire to short and keep the DF400 permanently on.
November 20, 2008 at 8:53 pmMatthew Miller
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The Vivitar DF400MZ looks like another instance of the Sakar / Digital Concepts AF952 flash:
http://sakar.com/p-1230.aspx?categoryid=155
Can you confirm that the back of yours looks like that?
Either Sakar is making these under license for a bunch of third-tier camera gear manufacturers (including once-famous names like this one), or else some Chinese company is making them and Sakar is just included. Either way, they just bought Vivitar so they’ll be the same thing soon if they weren’t before.
November 26, 2008 at 11:31 amEric Spehr
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Matt: My DF400MZ has the identical back as the model you mentioned. I figure it’s just a stop gag measure before I move to the MPEX flash next year.
March 4, 2009 at 12:21 amSabarish
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Hi Riiv,
What would you suggest for an absolute newbie to flashes? I have a Canon EOS400D and wanted to buy a decent flash to learn and experiment? I was looking at something under $150? Someone suggested I look at Vivitar or Sigma? Just confused what to go in for!
Thanks!
~ Sabarish
March 5, 2009 at 9:28 pmEric Spehr
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Sabarish:
Actually a DF400 would be a pretty good buy for you because it can operate in auto E-TTL mode if you stick it on camera as a failsafe.
If you turn on the 400D’s built-in flash it can drive the Vivitar DF400 as an optic slave on a lightstand. Be sure to keep the Vivitar’s sensor in range of the camera’s flash and start with a medium umbrella or small softbox.
And read the Strobist 101 articles if you haven’t yet. http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html
March 10, 2009 at 8:03 amSabarish
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Thanks for that! After researching around, I had pretty much narrowed down to the DF400 or the 285 (which is how I got to your site!) – so I shall go ahead and get the DF400 and see how it goes!
BTW I had another question (I haven’t worked with an external flash) – when you say ‘the built-in flash can drive the external flash as an optic slave’ – how does this work when one takes a photo? does the built-in flash also fire? or do we set some setting in the camera to only send out a signal or something like that, so only the external flash fires??
March 10, 2009 at 9:05 amEric Spehr
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Optic slaves are only built in on a couple flashes and most studio power packs. If an optic slave sees light that looks like another flash fired then the flash ( a DF400 in this case) fires itself.
March 30, 2009 at 12:16 pmSabarish
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Hi Eric,
I went ahead and got myself the Vivitar DF400. It works fine when it is on the camera, but I seem to be facing a sync issues while using it in slave mode.
The flash seems to be firing too quick. Even before the shutter opens. To check if it is firing on time, I took photos of the flash and in all the photos at all shutter speeds (from 1/200 down to 2 seconds) the flash is not on. I can see it fire alright, but i’m not able to capture the flash firing.
My friend tried the same with his Nikon D80 and was able to capture a photo of the DF400 firing in slave mode. Similarly I was able to capture his SB800 when it fired in slave mode.
Any idea why this is happening?
Regards,
Sabarish
November 15, 2009 at 6:37 pmSean
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@Sabarish
Firstly, thanks Riiv for the reviews and help. I am a flash noob too and in the same position as Sabarish (although I haven’t bought one yet).
To me, Sabarish’s problem might be caused by any preliminary flashes that fire on the pop-up flash due to auto-focus / exposure stuff. Try manual focus and manual mode and see if that makes a difference. (Again, I’m a noob so I could be completely wrong).
DF400 sounds like just the ticket for me!