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| Fujifilm X-T2 w/EF-X8 All Photos: © Stan Banos |
Of the literary thousands of posts I've put up over the past twenty years on my blog(s), probably around a dozen (make it two to be on the safe side) have been on camera equipment. Not my thing really, although I've loved my fair share of equipment. I'm also a natural light kinda guy, and with the added ability to dig out digital shadows, never thought I'd really need any kind of additional lighting. I-was-wrong. Sometimes that little extra kick to: help with the raccoon eyes, give some small measure of detail in deep shadows, or just add the little extra oomph can go further than I thought. But I'm still not about to embark upon lugging around some biblical sized potato masher. The miniscule, near toy like flash that comes (or at least came- I'm assuming they still do) with the Fujifilm's XT cameras is more what I'm talking about... Mostly I just I just need a little something for masked or sunny day eyes.... Fill Light!
And while the EF-X8 accessory flash is just fine for my Fujifilm and my (currently somewhat working) GR is also accounted for with its built in flash- what do I do with my Q? At first I tried the Godox iM20 a bite size chewable of a flash that was surprisingly... powerful. It's manual only, has four power levels, but if I went just slightly closer than full length portrait (in landscape format) at its lowest setting, it would still blow out the exposure! If you don't use WA lenses, this may not be a consideration; one thing that is, no matter what lens used is that you can't see its miniscule diodes in direct sunlight. Still... pretty freaking amazing for size and power alone!
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| Godox iA32 |
Fortunately, there was an alternative... the Godox iA32, it's automatic (not TTL, old school auto), set the ISO and aperture and you're good to go. Now, I've yet to shoot with it in the field, but some (very) preliminary testing shows that it blows out the exposure by a full stop when set to ISO 200, f8 on auto! Well, I can deal with that, especially in direct sunlight, just set a full stop higher- I'm not your onion skin depth of field, butter creme bokeh kinda guy anyways. And it also gives several f stops to choose from in auto (not just a couple) at every ISO, and seven manual power levels- with three levels for each of those seven, talk about fine tuning. I'll probably just use the 1/32 or 1/64 manual settings for most of my needs if I find the auto problematic. It's almost identical in size to my GR, runs on two AA's, has an easy to see digital read out on the back and can also be triggered off camera. Did I mention it also does bounce (and looks like an electric razor)?
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| Godox iM20 |
Godox has also recently come out with an iT30 mini TTL flash for most popular camera brands (except Leica) as well as the even smaller iT20 (also TTL) as I write this- pretty freaking awesome! At this point I'm betting they'll probably release both of the latter for Leica when I'm finally ready to use my then antiquated iA32 for reals...
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