Buying a third-party flashgun from China is a good way to save money, but often it means missing out on features. Until today, no Chinese-branded speedlight has supported “High Speed Sync” (also known as FP Sync or HSS) — the rapid pulsing that permits photographers to use flash at shutter speeds over 1/250 second.

The YN-568EX from Yongnuo (a company based in Shenzhen) is the latest product in their Speedlite EX range, following the TTL-enabled YN-565EX and manual YN-560EX. The new YN-568EX has TTL (including wireless slave mode) for Nikon or Canon, manual adjustment, an optical slave mode and a large LCD control panel. It is also the first hotshoe flash from a Chinese company that can synchronise up to 1/8000 second on Nikon or Canon cameras.