ST-E3-RT / YN-E3-RT

Hello everyone,

 

I recently purchased the Yongnuo version of the radio trigger for the Canon RT flash system. It was 1/3 the cost AND has an AF assist beam, which for some reason the Canon does not (so puzzling).

 

The trigger seems excellent, but the AF beam seems very misaligned on my copy. It appears way up near the top of the frame, making most of the auto focus points useless, as they are nowhere near the beam pattern. Is this a common issue with these triggers, I did mine perhaps get bumped out of place in shipping or something? Any workarounds for this perhaps? I’m thinking about popping the red cover off and trying to move it around

Is the beam useless? Is this preventing the focus from working in low light with TTL turned on? I have seen it explained the beam can be off a little and the camera will still focus fine. I don't know the build quality of these low cost flashes and If it would be hard to open up the flash and adjust the red light. Perhaps you could try taping a small magnifying lens to the front of the red light to better disperse the red light allowing the camera to focus. Just throwing that out there if it doesn't focus, and it is too late send the flash back.

Thanks Mark. Good idea with the small magnifying glass or something of the sort. The beam fires, and the camera sometimes achieves focus, but usually the beam doesn’t align with where the AF points are, unless I zoom in out out a bit and then zoom back to where I want to frame the shot.

While that may work as a temporary repair (attaching a lens to the front to realign it), I expect it will be frustrating to have to realign it every time you put the transmitter back on. The work to attach it (externally) securely enough to prevent element shift (when you put it back in the bag) is likely going to exceed the work necessary to adjust an AF assist emitter element inside. I don't have one of these, but it looks like the AF assist emitter is mounted directly above the hotshoe inside. It may simply be that a loose screw is what's off inside. Worst case is that the emitter is soldered to a PCB and is misaligned on that - in which case I'd try to do an exchange.

Thanks for the input, Marcus. I’m going to see if I can tweak it tomorrow and then seek a replacement.

Yongnuo 622 C TX' beam seems reasonably well aligned in my cop, fills the 200mm end's frame easily even at close distances sometimes it looks more prominent on the upper half of the 7omm end but I don't see a reason to complain.

Best of luck with yours!