Hi everyone,

I don’t particularly like nor do I take many pictures using flash as portraiture isn’t my chosen genre and I much prefer natural light, only the occasional family portrait but as I’ve mislaid my Godox TT-350 flash I thought I’d get something to replace it, especially with the holiday season fast approaching, visiting family, kids, grandkids etc.. I’ve turned the place upside down looking for my TT-350 to no avail, as is usually the case it’ll no doubt turn up in the last place that I look for it 🙂 or, probably more likely, long after I’ve given up looking for it!.

I stumbled upon this very small (74×50×72mm), lightweight (130g), retro-styled flash. It’s not got any bells and whistles and if one was in the market for a state of the art flash with bounce/swivel head, diffusers, more power, TTL and faster recycling then I’d say “this isn’t the flash you are looking for” 🙂 . It has manual and auto modes like one of my flash units from the 70s or 80s, two remote trigger modes marked S1 and S2, comes with a short off-camera flash sync cable, small soft pouch, ridiculously small print manual (PDF on their website) and takes two AAA NiMH rechargeable (of which I fortunately have plenty) or Alkaline batteries. With a guide number of 12  (ISO 100, metres) it’s not going to light up the Royal Albert Hall but should be just fine for portraits and suchlike uses.

Because it’s not dedicated to any make/model of camera it will work with most film cameras and digital cameras alike with center contact hot shoe connection or off-camera with the supplied sync cable, both of which are nice bonuses. As far as flash guns go it doesn’t get much more basic than this. The inner dial is purely for reference, one adjusts by setting the flash-to subject distance against the chosen ISO. You then read off the top section of the dial which indicates which flash power to select for a particular lens aperture to obtain a “correct” exposure.

As anyone familiar with the exposure triangle will instantly recognise half as much light intensity illuminating the subject (in this case flash output power better expressed as output duration) requires twice the size of the lens aperture opening (+1 stop) and vice versa to obtain a correct exposure given a certain ISO setting and subject distance as the light will drop of as the distance increases, thus it doesn’t communicate with the camera in any way, no TTL here. Of course you have to keep the camera’s shutter speed at or below the camera’s fastest flash synch speed which for me would generally be 1/250th sec.. All intuitive stuff for any “old school” photographers, with the emphasis, at least in my case on old. 🙂 You have full manual control of light output by rotating the knurled top dial which has 7 click stop settings (1/1-1/64 power). They state light distribution 24mm-105mm lenses (12mm-50mm MFT lenses) so it should be a good match for my 12-45mm f/4 M.Zuiko PRO zoom lens and my range of f/1.8 MFT prime lenses such as my M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 shown fitted below.

For my occasional usage it would seem to tick the boxes, unlike my larger Godox unit it fits neatly inside one of my very small camera bags and doesn’t take up much room and, importantly, add very much weight which means that I’m more inclined to take it with me on my travels and thus potentially use a flash more often than I have previously. As the saying goes “the best camera is the one that you’ve got with you” the same could be said of flash guns not that I can ever remember feeling particularly disadvantaged by not having one with me given my photographic interests. However I think it would make a nice compact flash to accompany one when travelling light. I’ve never made any secret of my love of retro-styled things so it handsomely ticks that box 🙂 , seen here, of course! 🙂 ,on my equally retro-looking, beloved, Olympus PEN-F digital camera which styling-wise is a nice match right down to the faux leather covering which is firmly the look that Godox and myself 🙂 were aiming for.

Kind regards

Leigh