Announcing the second edition of the Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass in Varanasi, India

I am pleased to announce that the incomparable travel photographer Matt Brandon and yours truly have teamed up again for the second edition of the Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass in Varanasi, India.

You'll learn how to create impactful, cinematic 'environmental portraits' by combining wide angle lenses, shallow depth-of-field and some extra light. At night, there will be plenty of time to discuss the images' catch of the day and suitable postproduction techniques.

Full details will follow in a couple of weeks - UPDATE: full details can be found here - but here's the lowdown: this is not just a travel workshop nor only a portrait workshop. It's not merely a street photography nor just a lighting workshop and it's definitely not only a postprocessing workshop. In fact, it's all five of those elements blended together in an incomparable mix, pretty much like the Indian chai we'll be having when we're discussing images at the end of the day. In short, if you're into any of the above, you should seriously consider coming. If you're into most or all of them, you have no excuse not to come!

We're wrapping up some final details, but the dates are already set and I already wanted to share these with you: this unique workshop will be held from Saturday, February 25th 2017 until Sunday, March 5th. We will meet in New Delhi and after two introductory days of shooting the bustling street life there, we will go to Varanasi. For the rest of the week, this holy city will become the beautiful backdrop for our portrait sessions. In fact, probably the only thing more photogenic than the city itself is its inhabitants. We will photograph sadhus and silversmiths, fishmongers and rickshaw drivers.

We will use available light but we'll help that available light a hand (or two) by bringing our own available lights (in the form of speedlights and portable studio flashes) to the party. 

Best of all, while other workshops often have an 8:1 or even 10:1 guest/workshop leader ratio, we're limiting subscriptions to only 6 participants (so a 3:1 ratio), so you will have ample opportunity to interact with us and with the people we'll be photographing.

In this workshop, you'll learn how to make beautifully lit images even in the harshest of natural light conditions.

This workshop is open to all levels of photographers using mirrorless or DSLR-style cameras who know the basics about operating their cameras. You don't need to be a flash wizard, but we'll help you become one! And if you're already familiar with flash, we'll teach you more than a couple of tricks to take your knowledge and your images up a couple of notches. We've called this 'a Lighting Masterclass' because that's what we want you to be by the time you return back home: a master of lighting, both available light and flash, and any mix in between, for that matter.  Below are some examples of the kinds of pictures we made on the first edition of this workshop last year and previous workshops in Delhi.

If you want to be first to learn when the workshop website goes up and final details and pricing are announced, use the form below. (Note: even if you're already subscribed to the regular MoreThanWords newsletter, I recommend you fill out this form).

UPDATE: No need to fill out the form as the Masterclass' page is now up: you can find it here.

We used a so-called 'Short Lighting' light setup here because it works great with character faces like this sadhu's.

Have your travel juices already started to flow? Subscribe to my regular newsletter and get this free eBook with '10 tips for better travel photographs'!

High Speed Sync for Fujifilm cameras: a review of the Cactus V6 Mk II radio transceiver

The shot above is probably the most important Fujifilm image I have shot in the past 4 years.

I am joking obviously, at least as far as the contents of the image go. This is by all accounts a crappy, ill-composed, flash-lit picture of a toy bulldozer!

Yet, it’s the fact that it was obviously lit by flash that makes this picture so interesting. Because… look at the Exif-info: that 1/8.000th isn’t a typo. No, after 5 years of Fujifilm X-series, it marks the start of a new era where Fujifilm users who are into flash photography, will no longer be limited by their Fuji’s sync speed. On an X-Pro 2, that is 1/250th, on an X-T1, it’s 1/180th of a second. From now on, you’ll be able to use these cameras with flash at up to 1/8.000 of a second. The little wonder of technology that makes this possible is a radio transceiver called the Cactus V6 Mark II. And the opening shot is the first image I shot with it. 

The Cactus V6 Mark II. Affordable High Speed Sync for Fujifilm users.

As I wrote in this review, I was already quite fond of the original Cactus V6 Mark I as a radio trigger for Fujifilm cameras because it lets you control the power of say a Nikon SB900 manually and remotely by connecting it to a V6 switched to Rx (receiver) mode. Pop a second V6 on your camera’s hotshoe in Tx (transmitter) mode, and you’re good to go. You have 4 different groups that you can assign flashes to and each group’s power can be controlled individually. When changing power levels, you can do it all conveniently from the V6-transmitter on your camera and you can do so for one group separately or for all groups proportionally. The V6 Mark II keeps all those cool features and adds what I have been hoping and waiting for ever since I switched to the Fuji X-system: High Speed Sync. Short of TTL, which I rarely use anyway, and High Speed Sync, which is about the only thing I miss from my DSLR days, the original V6 did everything I wanted it to. And now the Mark II adds just that one missing feature.

What is HSS?

Let’s backtrack a little. When you shoot flash, traditionally, you have to take the so-called X-sync speed - typically around 1/200th of a second - of your camera into account: you can only sync a flash at shutter speeds up to the sync speed.

“No longer having a sync speed to worry about, means you can use your expensive fast Fujifilm primes wide open and still use flash!”

Now, did you notice the word ‘traditionally’? I put it in there because, for a couple of years already, most camera and flash manufacturers have found ways around this limitation, effectively letting you use your flash with sync speeds all the way up to 1/8000th of a second.

A flash used on a camera with a sync speed of 1/200th of a second. Left: 1/200th of a second, middle: 1/320th of a second. Right: 1/500th of a second. Failure to respect the X-sync speed of your camera will result in the infamous black bar across your image.

Why is this such a big deal for Fujifilm users?

Working at 1/250th or 1/180th of a second with flash forces me to use very small apertures, resulting in a very busy background.

As I said in the previous paragraph, most camera and flash manufacturers already support HSS, except… Fujifilm… They are working on an HSS enabled flash (the EF-X500), that would even have the advantage of throwing TTL in the mix. By contrast, the V6 Mark II is manual-only, although you can change that manual power level remotely. However, that flash still isn’t available. Latest rumors point at a September release. According to Fujifilm’s press release, the EF-X500 would sport an optical triggering system. The V6 Mk II uses radio, which is more reliable in direct sunlight, is exactly the kind of situation where you would need HSS in the first place. So, the upcoming EF-X500 and the Cactus V6 needn’t be competitors. On the contrary, they might end up working well together…

Now about those HSS advantages: there are two of them, and they’re both super important for flash users. First of all, no longer having a sync speed to worry about, means you can use your expensive fast Fujifilm primes wide open and still use flash, as the example below shows.

Compare this image to the previous one: the background here is nice and blurry. It makes you focus on the subject in the foreground.

Thanks to the Cactus V6 Mark II, I was able to use flash (in this case a Cactus RF60, but I also tried it with a Nikon SB-900) and shoot at f/2.8 at 1/8.000th of a second. With any other trigger, I would have had to shoot at 1/250th of a second on my X-Pro 2 (and even 1/180th of a second on the X-T1). That means I would have to use an aperture of f/16. I don’t know about you, but I did not buy the 56 mm or the 50-140 mm to use it only at f/16! HSS works with Cactus' own RF60 flash and with a large number of third-party flashes (some 60 of them), too. The full list is detailed at the bottom of this page. Apparently, one of the most important criteria that the third party flash has to have is that it has to support HSS.

Now, in all honesty, there’s another way you could solve this problem, at least when your subject is stationary. That’s by putting a neutral density (ND) filter over your lens, in this example a 5 stop one. However, as anyone who’s ever used NDs will testify: using them adds another layer of complexity to your flash photography. Also, as they’re an extra piece of glass, the cheaper ones may have a slight impact on your image quality and the stronger ones will often introduce a colour cast, too.

And finally, ND’s won’t help you if you want to freeze fast moving outdoor action, like dancers jumping, with flash outdoors. That’s because at those slow regular sync speeds, the ambient light that falls on your subject will cause some blur around it in the final image. For that blur to disappear, you need to use faster shutter speeds.

Without High Speed Sync, the only way to use flash, e.g. as fill light when the light is really bright and contrasty outside, is to use a truckload of neutral density. In this image, I had to use over 10 stops to get the aperture down to F/1.8 to get the cinematic shallow depth of field that I wanted. 

This image was shot with a Sony camera and a 600 Ws CononMk i6 EX Leopard using High Speed Sync. Up until now, you simply could not make this kind of action-freezing, flash-lit shot with a Fujifilm X-series camera other than the X100 series. Thanks to the Cactus V6 Mark II, now you can.

Normal HSS

This is where High Speed Sync comes in. I won’t copy the V6 user manual - in fact, it’s 100 pages long and you can download it here if you want to - but the procedure is rather straightforward. It took me 5 minutes to get my X-Pro 2, one cactus V6 Mark II trigger and one Cactus RF60 flash shooting in High Speed Sync. Honestly, I was surprised at how smooth it all went.

The Cactus RF60 is a manual flash that has a built-in radio receiver that allows HSS with the V6 Mk II trigger. In the case of non-Cactus flashes, you have to attach them to a Cactus V6 receiver. Although the trigger on your Fujifilm camera needs to be a V6 Mk II, Cactus are working on a firmware update that will support Power Sync if you use the V6 as a receiver with a non-Cactus flash. For Normal HSS support with those non-Cactus flashes, you'll always need to use a V6 Mk II as a receiver.

The Cactus V6 Mark II will not only enable HSS with Cactus’ own RF60 flash, but with just about any speedlight, like the Nikon SB-900 or the cheap Godox V850 flashes. The advantage of Cactus’ own RF60 is that it has a built-in receiver. In the case of non-Cactus flashes, you have to attach them to a Cactus V6 receiver. Although the trigger on your Fujifilm camera needs to be a V6 Mark II, Cactus are working on a firmware update that will enable users to use the V6 Mark I as an HSS-enabled receiver.

The only thing you have to do - once - is ‘train’ your trigger to get to know your specific Fujifilm camera: for that, you need to go into the trigger’s menu and it will ask you to fire one shot at 1/1000th of a second. That’s all. Once that’s done, you simply set the trigger to ‘Normal HSS’ mode. Specifically for Fujifilm cameras, as they don’t officially support High Speed Sync yet, you also have to set ‘Forced HSS’ to ‘On’ when you want to shoot at speeds higher than your sync speed. Luckily, you don’t have to dive into any menus here: You simply push the rotary wheel on the back of the V6. When you’re back to using shutter speeds below the sync speed, don’t forget to push the rotary wheel again. I found myself sometimes inadvertently switching between those two modes simply because the wheel had bumped into something. Cactus have already replied they would fix this in the next firmware update.

I put a flash outside, behind the door. Without the flash, either Serge would have been completely dark or the outside world would have been completely blown out. Thanks to HSS, I could use the 16 mm at f/1.4 and 1/8000th of a second. Without HSS, I would have had to shoot this at f/8 to stay within the X-Pro 2’s 1/250th of a second sync speed.

Without getting too technical, what happens in Normal HSS mode is that the flash fires almost stroboscopically during the shutter speed of say 1/2000th of a second. Yes, it’s hard to believe but in that short period of time, the flash fires more than once but that’s what happens! The downside is that a lot of flash power gets wasted, but that’s the case for all HSS systems that work like this, also Nikon’s and Canon’s!

Power Sync

That’s why Cactus has also included a second way of letting you work beyond the sync speed of your camera, and that’s called Power Sync. This technology works differently: it uses a slice of the flash curve’s tail and matches that up with your shutter speed. So in a way, your flash acts as a continuous light source, if only for that very short shutter speed. For this technology to work, the flash duration needs to be as long (slow) as possible. That’s why it will only work at full power. The advantage is that less light is lost, so when there’s a lot of ambient light you need to tame, or you want to use very big, light-sucking modifiers, Power Sync might give you some more mileage. The downside compared to Normal HSS is that you cannot dial your flash power down from full power. In the V6’s menu, you can adjust which part of the flash curve is used, simply by turning a dial from 0 to 32. For example, for the RF60, I found a setting of 28 to be ideal. Back in the day, the Pocketwizard TT1 and TT5 system offered a similar option of adjusting the sync timing but you needed to program the units via your computer. Compared to this, Cactus’ implementation is incredibly simple and straightforward.

I’d recommend starting out in Normal HSS and using Power Sync when you really need to squeeze every last photon out of your flashes. Power Sync is also the option to choose when you want to work with studio flashes beyond the sync speed.

Two shots, both with the flash at full power. The darkest one (left) was shot in Normal HSS mode. The slightly brighter one (right) was shot in Power Sync mode. In both shots, the subject was standing at the same distance to the flash. So the difference you see is the extra power that Power Sync gives you over Normal HSS.

Power Sync is also the way to go if you want to use studio flashes. This shot was taken with the 600 Ws Godox AD600B, attached to a Cactus V6 Mark II receiver and triggered by a Cactus V6 Mark II transmitter on my Fujifilm camera. At first, I could not get this to work, but after contacting Cactus' support, they told me that for the moment, when working with these kinds of powerful strobes in Power Sync, you have to to set the receiver in Nikon mode. 

So does this this mean you can sell your ND filters?

Not quite: if you really like to work with flash and use your precious primes wide open, there will still be instances where even at 1/8000th of a second, you’ll have too much ambient light at f/1.4 or f/1.2 and ISO 200. And your Fuji’s electronic shutter is not an option, as it does not work with flash at all. Although in a pinch you could drop your ISO to 100, I don’t recommend you do because it effectively decreases your dynamic range. In those cases, you might still want to use a two or three stop ND filter. Also, although HSS is certainly more user-friendly than using ND filters, it wastes flash power. So, an ND filter can still come in handy on those occasions where you really need to squeeze every last photon of light out of your flash.

Also, Normal HSS and Power Sync do not work on all Fujifilm cameras: I have personally tried it on the X-Pro 1, X-Pro 2, X-T1 and X100T. According to Cactus, it does not work on the X-E2. I don't know about the X-E1, X-A1, X-M1 or X-E2s or older versions of the X100. 

Finally, if you want to work with bigger flashes that don’t play ball with Cactus’ Power Sync technology, you will still need ND filters to keep shutter speeds under your sync speed when working with wide open apertures.

Ergonomics and handling

The V6II is compatible in Normal HSS and Power Sync mode with Cactus’ own RF60 flash (obviously) but also with a lot of flashes that you might have lying around from your pre-Fujifilm days. For example, I tried it with an SB900 and it also worked. Oddly enough, the few flashes HSS does not work with, are the current Fujifilm flashes like the EF-42. For optimal compatibility and performance, you can choose the flash model (e.g. Nikon SB-900) in the menu of the V6.

“The V6 Mark II should be in the bag of every Fujifilm photographer who’s even halfway interested in using flash on location. ”

Putting my old Nikon SB900 back to life - and not just ordinary life but life in the fast lane! By putting it on a V6 Mark II, I can use it in HSS mode with my X-Pro 2.

Putting my old Nikon SB900 back to life - and not just ordinary life but life in the fast lane! By putting it on a V6 Mark II, I can use it in HSS mode with my X-Pro 2.

The Cactus V6 has an easy-to use interface with 4 direct-access buttons, a control wheel and a pass-through TTL hotshoe, but as a result of that, it’s also quite wide. In fact, on some cameras, especially the X-T10, it makes it hard to adjust the shutter speed dial. The easiest workaround is to set your shutter speed dial to the T-position and then adjust your shutter speed with the front dial anywhere between your fastest shutter speed and 30 seconds. You did know that trick, didn’t you?

On the X-Pro 2, there’s another thing to watch out for: don’t turn the lever that secures the trigger to the hotshoe too far to the right, or you will not be able to change your ISO anymore because it would refrain you from lifting the ISO dial.

Because of the design of the X-T1 and the newly announced X-T2, there is more clearance between the bottom of the trigger and the dials on the top of these cameras and I don’t expect any issues there.

Finally, make sure you slide the V6 all the way in the hotshoe. If necessary, push it a little. I’ve had a couple of instances where my flashes did not fire because I had not pushed it all the way in.

Conclusion

The V6 Mark II should be in the bag of every Fujifilm photographer who’s even halfway interested in using flash on location. It dramatically extends your creative options in terms of working wide open and/or freezing action and it does so in a way that is relatively easy to understand and set up, especially considering that Fujifilm does not have native HSS support at the moment. On top of that, it lets you put those old Canon or Nikon flashes that you might still lingering about in the cupboard to good use. Considering it’s currently the only trigger that currently does that, the price (under $200 for a pair) is a bargain, too. I know more than one Fujifilm photographer whose leather wrist wrap costs more than a V6!

In Belgium, the units can be bought through www.grobet.be, amongst other dealers. In the rest of Europe, the V6 Mark II and the RF60 are available for pre-order through the website of X-Photographer Damien Lovegrove via this link. Damien's even got a cool bonus: if you buy at least two units or a kit consisting of at least one trigger and one flash, you get one of his - excellent - training videos on off camera flash for free! More details over here.

For this image, I exceptionally dropped the ISO to 100 so I could shoot at f/1.8 and still keep the background dark enough.

Interested in more news and reviews?

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The Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers

Over $2.400 of resources for only $87

Every once in a while, I blog about a bundle that I think is interesting for photographers. Now, I nearly missed this one, because I thought it was a bundle for web designers. Turns out it is really much more a bundle with web and marketing tools for professional and semi-professional photographers and bloggers. The Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers bundles a bunch of eBooks, video tutorials, software and templates that, when purchased separately, would set you back over $2.400. Now you can get them for only $87. I was actually planning on buying two courses when I got word that they were included in the bundle and those alone would have cost me around $200. So getting the bundle was a no-brainer.

My personal top-10 of what's included

I'll just give you my personal top-10, but there are many more resources. For example, there's a tonne of Wordpress-based content (photography themes, shopping cart plug-ins, ...) but as I use Squarespace for this website, that content has little value to me. If you're running a Wordpress-based website, chances are that you might want to get the bundle for the Wordpress-based content alone. Check out the full list of resources here!

1. Making your Mark Online: Digital Marketing eCourse for Photographers

This is a marketing for photographers course by Corwin Hiebert, manager to one of the most successful photographers I know: David duChemin. So, I figure, if there's one guy a photographer can learn digital marketing from, it's Corwin! As photographers, we are generally too busy being creative to bother about the marketing. In fact, some of us consider ourselves to be artists and find that 'marketing' is a dirty word. Yet, simply making art does not pay the rent or feed the children or the cat... And even when you don't need the money, wouldn't your rather have thousands of people seeing what you created rather than hundreds? That's what this  course is all about.

Normally, this resource is $79, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

2. The Creative Composites Bundle

In this course by Photoshop wizard Serge Ramelli, you'll learn all about compositing: putting a model you photographed in a studio into a different background. 

Normally, this resource is $135, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

3. Affiliate Marketing - Monetizing Your Website with Value-Based Content

This is a brand new course by Dave Seeram, of which I've previously watched and enjoyed 24/7 Photo Pro on how to make your website make money for you. 

Normally, this resource is $97, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

4. SEO Cookbook for Photographers

This eBook teaches you the basics of Search Engine Optimization. We all know how much time and effort it takes to keep a photography website and blog alive with fresh content. This eBook shows you how investing a little more effort can attract a lot more visitors to your website.

Normally, this resource is $99, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

5. Designer Sets of Social Media Templates

This is a set of drag-and-drop templates that let you easily create Facebook banners and the like.

Normally, this resource is $89, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

6. Photographer Logo & Overlay Templates

If you're looking for a professionally designed logo for your business cards, this set by Brad Wayland has a couple of great-looking options.

Normally, this resource is $48, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

7. Photo Collage Templates for Social Media

A sample of the templates that are included in the bundle.

Another set of customisable drag-and-drop templates.

Normally, this resource is $98, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

8. Original Designer Fonts Bundle

76 script-based fonts that work really well with senior portrait, wedding or other announcement cards.

Normally, this resource is $39.99, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

9. Illustrator Quickstart Video Course

As a photographer, you sometimes need Adobe Illustrator, but if you're anything like me, you haven't got a clue how it works. That's where this Quickstart course comes in. It teaches you the basics!

Normally, this resource is $20, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

10. Power of Planning. A Guide for Creating Your Editorial Calendar.

This is one that interests me a lot: as many photographers and bloggers, I consider myself to be more creative than organised - and that's an understatement. The result is I don't blog as much as I should - and could. This training resource promises to help me get a grip on planning my blogging better. I look forward to trying it out!

Normally, this resource is $79, now it's included in the 5 Day Deal Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers.

Adding it all up

I've done the math, and this top-10 alone would cost me $783,99. Now I've purchased it (and I did actually purchase it - I did not receive it for free) at a fraction of that cost.

I suggest you head over to the 5 Day Deal website to check what other resources are included that might interest you even more than this top-10. There's a big chance you'll come to the same conclusion as I did: this bundle is a steal!

The only thing to bear in mind - as the name 5 Day Deal implies - is that this bundle isn't around forever: in fact, you can only buy it until July 19th. Then it's gone forever. And in the case of the 5 Day Deal, that is to be taken litterally, as they never promote the same content twice. Final thing, if you're living in the EU, there's 21% VAT that gets added to your bill, unless you have a valid VAT number!

A nice extra touch is that 10 percent of the sales go directly to charity: you can even choose your own charity from the list during the checkout procedure.

Disclosure: if you purchase the Web Essentials Bundle for Photographers, MoreThanWords.be will make a small commission (at no extra cost to you). This helps to support the free content, reviews and tips on this website and its maintenance. However, rest assured that I will only recommend products or bundles that I find interesting enough.

What's the big deal about The Big Deal?

If you're reading this blog, chances are that you are into photography, postprocessing or probably even both. Well, I've got some interesting news for you! There's a new photography bundle out, The Big Deal. I'll immediately cut to the chase: this bundle, which is only available until July 4th, contains photography software, video tutorials, eBooks, Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions. The combined value of all the goodies in the bundle is over $3.000, yet it's priced at $99... and that's really a steal! 

Generally, there's a lot of 'filler' content in these bundles: stuff that you even would not want to get for free, let alone pay for it. But the Big Deal is much more about 'killer content' than it is about 'filler content'.

Let's have a look at what's inside. I won't list everything - there's a full list available over here - just my personal highlights.

Software

Although there's a lot more software in The Big Deal, I've limited myself to my personal top-3:

1. Photo Mechanic 5

More and more high-volume photographers who are using Lightroom, are starting to use Photo Mechanic as a front-end to Lightroom. Instead of waiting forever for Lightroom to build 1:1 previews, they use Photo Mechanic for the culling (selection) of the best images and then import only the selected ones into Lightroom. Ratings and Color Labels applied in Photo Mechanic can be read by Lightroom.

If you're a high-volume shooter, Photo Mechanic is an ideal 'front end' to Lightroom: do your culling in Photo Mechanic and your developing in Lightroom.

If you want to speed up your Lightroom workflow, Photo Mechanic is the way to go. In fact, Photo Mechanic only has one disadvantage: at $150, it's more expensive than Lightroom itself. If you get The Big Deal, it's included in the $99 bundle. For some of you, this should be enough to go for the 'Buy Now' button, so I've included one below, just for your convenience :-) By the way, if you want to see a video on how I use Lightroom and Photo Mechanic together and how it could speed up your workflow, check out this recent blog post of mine.

2. Tonality by Macphun

After Silver Efex Pro, Tonality by Macphun is probably the best Black & White software out there. It's got tonnes of presets and what I especially like is that it has built-in layer capabilities: this allows you for example to blend what one preset does to the sky and what another preset does to the foreground

Tonality (Mac-only) has the ability to work with layers inside the application. This lets you combine presets or easily fade their effect.

Normally, it's about $60, now it's included in The Big Deal.

3. Clarity by Topaz Labs

If you like the Clarity slider in Lightroom, you'll love Clarity by Topaz Labs: it's like a whole plug-in dedicated to creative sharpening effects. It's one of the favorite plug-ins of master retoucher and compositer Glyn Dewis, whose videos are also included in the bundle!

Clarity is normally around $50, now it's included in The Big Deal.

Video Tutorials

There is a plethora of video tutorials included in The Big Deal. Below is my personal top-3. Just as with the software, some of these tutorials cost more if you buy them separately than if you get them in the bundle.

1. Language of Light, Volume 1 by Joe McNally

If you want to learn about off-camera flash, no better source than Joe McNally. I've bought this tutorial myself a couple of years ago and it's worth every penny of its $120 price tag. So this is another example of a tutorial that by itself costs more than the whole bundle itself!

2. Retouching and Compositing Video Bundle by Glyn Dewis

If you're into compositing, British guru Glyn Dewis is your man. I own his book on compositing and it's excellent. I've also seen him live on a couple of occasions and the man knows his Photoshop stuff and he's witty to boot. This bundle contains several of training and again, when purchased separately, would cost more than the whole Big Deal Bundle.

3. Photoshop Training with Dave Cross

Dave Cross is another one of those Photoshop giants. He's got three courses in The Big Deal: one on working non-destructively, one on selections, channels and masks and one on automating Photoshop. 

This is just my personal top-3, but there's also Lightroom training by RC Concepcion, a video tutorial on how to use Photoshop for video editing and lots more. Again, you can see the whole list here.

Presets and actions

Finally, there's a bunch of Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions in the bundle as well, like Lighroom guru Jared Platt's comprehensive preset pack, by itself a $115 value.

Conclusion. Is it worth it?

There's lots more interesting stuff than what I've listed in this post but ultimately, you're the only one who can decide on whether this bundle is worth it or not. What I generally do in cases like this, is have a look at the entire list (scroll down a bit in this link), and check what stuff is in there that I'm really interested in. In this particular case, that would be well over $1.000. So the way I look at it is I get a 90 percent discount on the stuff that really interests me, and I get all the other stuff thrown in for free, in which there will probably be some hidden gems, too!

But that's just me and my rational approach. You could just go and say '$3.000 worth of photo stuff for $99?' That's a no-brainer :-)

Disclaimer:
In the interest of full disclosure: the above links are affiliate links. If you purchase the Big Deal through the links in this blog post, MoreThanWords receives a commission that is paid for by the seller. In other words, it does not cost you anything extra and it helps me pay the bills of running this site and all the free content and videos that are on it. Rest assured that I don't simply advise this bundle because I'm an affiliate. In fact, I have the opportunity to promote bundles like this one quite regularly, but there's a lot of chaff amongst the wheat. So, I only promote the ones that I think are interesting, like this one. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.

Flash and the Fujifilm X-system: dramatic lighting in India

After my blog post about my first six months with the X-Pro 2 went online, a number of people asked me how I lit my Varanasi portraits. So I thought this would make an excellent subject for a blog post.

One flash, big or small

In 90 percent of my shots, I use only one artificial light. Depending on how much power I need, this can be a powerful portable, battery powered studio strobe like the Jinbei HD600 (reviewed here) or a simple speedlight. With my X-Pro 2, the latter will generally be a Godox Ving V850 (reviewed here) or a Cactus RF60, triggered by a Cactus V6 transmitter (reviewed here). 

However, as the opening image shows, this does not mean I only have one light source in my shot. On sunny days, I'll generally pose my subject with his back towards the sun. Then, I'll underexpose the ambient. This kills two birds in one stone. First of all, the sun makes for a nice rim light, separating my subject from the background.

Obviously, if you'd do this without flash light, your subject would be in the shade. But that's where the flash comes in! I generally work in manual mode, both on my ambient exposure as on my flash exposure. After having set the background exposure the way I like it, I'll start adjusting the flash power until it looks right to me.

That's one of the reasons why I love Electronic Viewfinders so much: they can give me a preview of the ambient exposure and they also give me a glare-free, reflection-free review of the image in the viewfinder, immediately after I've taken the shot. Ever tried reviewing the image you just made on a DSLR screen in the blazing sun? I rest my case.

Positioning the flash

I love me some drama in my shots. So I'll rarely put the flash behind me. Most of the time, my flash will come from a 45 degree angle or even more, because that lets me create some drama in the face of my subject and it gives a nice triangle of light under the eye on the shadow-side of the face, the famous 'Rembrandt-look'.

Sometimes, I'll have my subjects look straight into the camera, but whenever possible, I prefer to have them look slightly off-camera. When you position your subject that way, you have two ways of lighting them: you can either light the side of the face that's directed towards the camera, or you can light the side of the face that's turned away from the camera. The first is called broad lighting and the second is called short lighting. 

FUJIFILMX-Pro2 | XF16mmF1.4 R WR | 1/250 sec. @ f/1.8 | ISO 200
In the opening image, the flash and softbox were just outside of the frame, to the left. In this image, the flash is to my right, lighting the side of the face that's turned towards the camera. The result is a much flatter looking image.

The latter makes for a much more dramatic look. Compare the opening image of the rickshaw driver (which used the short lighting technique) to this one here, which was lit with broad lighting.

When I shoot against the sun, I'll also try to put my flash diagonally opposite to the sun, and have my subject stand in between them. This diagonal lighting technique is called cross lighting. If this means I have to move my subject, so be it. Of course, in the mean time, I take the background into consideration, too. This makes that sometimes, I'll revisit a certain scene later that day or earlier the following day to assure the best possible combination of sun and background. If there's no sun, I'll recreate the cross-lighting scheme using two flashes 

The 'short'-cross-lighting technique in action. The light falling on this sadhu's shoulder is the sun.

Modifiers

My two SMDV speedboxes in action. The small one on the right is the SMDV Speedbox 70, equipped with a grid. The big one on the left is the SMDV Alpha 110.

Recently, I have discovered the fantastic line-up of modifiers by a company called SMDV. In Varanasi, I used both their SMDV Speedbox 70 and their SMDV Alpha Speedbox 110. The first is aimed at speedlight, the second has a Bowens mount and is aimed at bigger studio lights. They are strong, reliable and can be set-up in under 30 seconds. This means a lot if you're constantly moving around. And, better still, breaking them up is done in literally two seconds. You just press a couple of buttons and off you go.

FUJIFILMX-Pro2 | XF50-140mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR | 1/250 sec. @ f/5.0 | ISO 400
This image only has one light in it: the Jinbei HD 600 fired through the SMDV Alpha 110 softbox.
Postprocessing was done with one of my Colorific Color Grading Presets for Lightroom.

But maybe the best thing about the SMDV Speedboxes is that both of them can be gridded. Especially in the narrow Varanasi alleyways, this can make for a huge difference and lets you control your light much more. In fact, they only have one disadvantage: they're not cheap but you really get what you pay for in this case. In Europe, they can be bought through the fine folks of Foto Morgen. Outside of Europe, I'd recommend the equally helpful staff of 1212world.com. If you want to know more about the SMDV 70, check out fellow X-photographer Matt Brandon's blog post about it.

Another image in which I used short lighting. The softbox is just outisde of the frame. This results in a soft yet contrasty light with a dramatic light falloff (because of the inverse square law). By the time the light that correctly lights his forehead, has reached his ears, it has already lost a lot of power.
Image processed with my new Lightroom preset pack: Piet's Power Preset Pack, Vol 01.

I'll generally put the softboxes as close to my subject as possible, generally just outside of the frame,  for three reasons. First of all, the closer they are, the softer the light will be. Yet, the light falloff will be more dramatic which is what I'm after in the first place, remember? Finally, by putting them close to my subject, I make it easier on my flash because it has to work less hard. If you're familiar with the infamous inverse square law, this says that if you double the distance between your flash and your subject, you'll need four times the light output.

This inverse square law can also work in your favour: if you halve the distance between your light and your subject, you need four times less light!  

ND filters

Finally, there's one other piece of kit in my camera bag that comes in really handy when using flash with the Fujifilm X-system. Unlike most other brands, Fujifilm cameras still aren't capable of performing High Speed Sync. Unless you're shooting the fantastic X100 series cameras, you're limited to a sync speed of 1/250th on the X-Pro 2 and 1/180th on all the other X-series cameras. If there's a lot of sun (and I can assure you that in Varanasi, there is!) this means that you'll have to resort to apertures of f/16 or smaller. In other words, no way of using shallow depth of field to isolate your subject from the background. Unless... you use an ND filter. I generally use a combination of a fixed (by Formatt-Hitech) and a variable one (by B+W) and I'll explain the reason for that in an upcoming blog post.

If you want to know more about working with flash in general and off-camera flash in particular, you might want to check out my Making Light and Making Light II ebooks, available over at Craft & Vision. If you already know your way around the technical sides of off-camera flash and if you're looking for a more inspirational book, make sure to check out the slightly fantastic Joey L's Photographing Shadow and Light.

Review: Cactus V6 Transceiver and the Fujifilm X system

Earlier, I reviewed the excellent Godox Ving V850 manual flash. It still is one of my favorite flashes for off-camera flash photography in general and on my Fuji system in particular. However, recently, I’ve also been working a lot with another manual system: the Cactus RF-60 flash and the Cactus V6 transceiver. As this is a manual system, it isn't exclusive to Fuji users: almost any camera with a central firing pin on the hotshoe can use it. That's the beauty of manual flashes: they work on every camera. In this blog post, I'll focus on the V6 transceiver.

The V6 Transceiver

I still remember using the Cactus V4 on my X-Pro 1 a couple of years ago. It was a small and cheap, no frills triggering system. It got the job done, but that was about it. Two iterations later - I've never used the V5 - the V6 is quite a different beast: first of all, it's a transceiver: the same unit can function as a transmitter or as a receiver. You just slide a switch on the side to set it up. The unit has grown quite a lot in size, but also in specifications: in fact, it seems like remote TTL and High Speed Sync are about the only two things you cannot do with it. And one of those is about to change, as you'll read further down the road! (Images © Cactus)

• Control of up to 4 groups of remote flashes
  The V6 can control 4 groups of remote flashes: either RF60 flashes, or other compatible flashes. In that last case, those flashes have to be attached to a V6 acting as a receiver. The RF60 has its own compatible receiver which obviously makes it a compelling candidate to use in concert with the V6, if you don't already own a flash. To turn a group on or off, you simply press the buttons A through D on the left hand side of the transceiver.
• Change power levels remotely
  You can remotely change the power level of compatible flashes, such as Cactus' own RF60, from the easy to use rotary dial. But, as I'll talk about in the section 'Recycling your old Canon and Nikon flashes', you can even control the (manual) power of those flashes remotely!
• Change power levels independently or in unison
  This one's a biggie if you use multiple groups a lot. Say you're working at f/8 and you've set group A to quarter power, group B to one sixteenth power and group C to one eight power to get the shot looking the way you want it. Now suppose you want to close your aperture down from f/8 to f/11. With many systems, you'd have to increase each individual group's power output by one stop. With the Cactus V6, you can choose: you can change the power individually but you can also change the power of all groups together! A big time-saver.
• TTL passthrough hotshoe
  Although the V6 does not support off-camera TTL flash, it has a hotshoe on top of it. When used as a receiver, this hotshoe obviously lets you slide the remote flash in it, like most recent receivers do. But, when used as a transmitter on your camera, the V6 passes the TTL information from your camera on to a TTL flash you put on it. In other words, you can use the V6 to combine a TTL on-camera flash with manual remote flashes. This is something wedding and event photographers will appreciate. The passthrough hotshoe has another advantage, which I'll talk about later in the section 'Using two trigges simultaneously'.
• A lock system for the selection rotary dial
  Here's another cool thing: because the rotary dial is facing towards you, it's not uncommon on smaller camera bodies, such as the X-series, to have your nose or your forehead inadvertently change settings when your working. In one of the firmware updates, Cactus installed the option of locking the rotary dial. In that case, you have to depress it first to make changes. An ideal setting for people with big noses, such as myself! Here's the how-to straight from the manual:
  • On the TX main screen, pressing and holding the selection dial or the OK button for 2 seconds will lock the selection dial from adjusting all group or single group power level. (Note: The short-cut to adjust a single group power level by pressing a group button and turning the dial simultaneously will be unaffected.
  • To temporarily unlock the selection dial, press the selection dial or OK button once. Alternatively, press and hold any group button to select a group for power level adjustment. The dial will be locked again when no button or dial is pressed or turned for 2 seconds.
  • To permanently unlock the selection dial, press and hold the selection dial or the OK button for 2 seconds.
• Advanced features
  The V6 also has another nifty feature up its sleeve: you can set up a delay in milliseconds. I haven't actually tried this yet, but it looks like you could use this feature as a workaround to do something resembling off-camera second-curtain sync. If you're reading this and you can confirm this, please let me know in the comments. Another nice feature is that you can choose the increments between 1/10th of a stop to half a stop. 

Recycling your old Canon and Nikon flashes

A really nice feature about the V6 trigger is that you can recycle your old Canon and Nikon flashes. After all, if whether you’re only adding Fujifilm camera to your existing Nikon or Canon gear or you’re making the switch entirely, you’ve probably already spent a lot of money on bodies and lenses so anything that you can reuse is welcome. Well, the good thing is that most Nikon and Canon flashes can be used in combination with a V6 transceiver. Although you obviously lose any TTL and high speed sync functionality, you can still set up the system so that you can remotely change the manual power level of your Nikon flash. That’s right: by attaching a V6 transceiver to your Fuji camera and by putting your old SB900 on another V6 transceiver, you’ll be able to manually change the power of that flash! What’s even better is that if you use two different flashes (e.g. an SB-700 and an SB-900) you can set the system up that they have the same absolute maximum output (dictated by the lowest output of both). In other words, when you set them both in separate groups to fire at 1:1, they will both fire at the power of the SB-700. This is handy in situations where you want symmetry in your lighting (think of two lights left and right behind your subject to be used as rim lights) but you don’t have two identical flashes.

Using two triggers simultaneously

This Sadhu was lit by an SMDV Alpha 110 Softbox with a Bowens mount (available in Europe through this reseller), attached to my Jinbei HD 600. The rim light was created by a Cactus RF60, fired through a gridded SMDV 70 Speedbox.

FUJIFILM X-Pro2 | XF50-140mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR @ 129.2 mm | 1-250 sec at f - 8,0 | ISO 400

Let's stack some triggers! Thanks to the hotshoe on the V6, I can stick my Jinbei trigger on top of it and fire both the 600 Ws Jinbei and a smaller flash like the Cactus RF60 together, while still maintaining separate (and remote!) control over their respective power levels.

As I've explained in an earlier blog post, if I want to use a more powerful flash, I often pick up my Jinbei HD 600 II, a review of which you can find here. The problem is that the Jinbei has its own - relatively simple - trigger which lets me change the power of the flash remotely. And this is where the hotshoe on the V6 comes in really handy. If I want to use 2 flashes, one powerful one and a smaller one (e.g. as an accent light), I can slide the Jinbei trigger in the Cactus V6 hotshoe. This makes both flashes trigger simultaneously, and I can still power them up or down remotely (and separately) by adjusting the respective trigger.

Next up: High Speed Sync for Fuji cameras?

This is fairly recent news which got me very excited: Cactus apparently are not resting on their laurels. In fact, they've announced that they are working on a V6 Mk II update that would - through some sort of ingenious hack - allow High Speed Sync with any camera, including Fujifilm cameras. Yes, you've read that right! High Speed Sync on a Fujifilm camera. I'll report back as soon as I've been able to test this out myself. Originally, it was rumored that this HSS hack would also be made available on the current V6 triggers through a firmware update but apparently that's not necessarily the case. Those of you who want to buy a set of V6 triggers now and want HSS, might want to wait a while until things are clearer.

Conclusion

I have to say I really like the V6 transceiver. It's a bit bulky on my X-T1, but on the other hand, unlike some other flash triggers, it is very ergonomical with lots of direct-access buttons and it still gives enough clearance so that I can turn the dials on the top of my camera easily. It just takes some getting used to the fact you can't see the value you set from the top of the camera anymore because the trigger partly obscures it. Obviously, you still see your settings through the viewfinder!

Because the X-Pro 2's hotshoe sits slightly lower (more level with the speed selector dial), there's less clearance and people with very big fingers might find it a more difficult to adjust shutter speed - mine are still ok. However, on both the X-Pro 2 as on the X-T1, you can always turn your shutter speed dial in the T position and then change the shutter speed all the way from 1/4.000th (1/8.000th on an X-Pro 2) to 30 seconds, simply by turning the front command dial. DSLR-style. But you knew that, didn't you?

Availability

• In Belgium, the Cactus V6 Transceiver can be purchased through Grobet.be
• In the UK, Fujifilm X-Photographer Damien Lovegrove is the importer and also sells them through his online shop. Damien is also an avid user of these flashes and triggers.
• International orders can also be made directly through Cactus' own online store.

UPDATE: Contrary to what I said in the original post, it appears that the HSS trick might not be available as a firmwire update after all, but rather only on the soon to be released V6 Mk II triggers. I'll report back on this as soon as I have more info. In the mean time, those of you who are looking at buying a set and want/need HSS, might want to hold off until the V6 Mk II is released. I have updated the blog post.

2 months with the X-Pro 2: my 10 favourite features (part 2)

(Read about features 1 to 5 in this post)

In a month, I’ll be off to India again to teach a travel photography workshop together with fellow X-Photographer Matt Brandon and I hope to take the X-Pro 2 with me. I’m really looking forward to the trip. When I’m traveling, I always hope that nothing bad will happen to my gear because it’s often difficult to replace or repair. That’s why I’m extremely happy with the next item in my top-10 of new features:

6) Weather Sealing

Contrary to the X-Pro 1, the X-Pro 2 is now weather sealed. Now, truth be told I’ve never had any issues with my non-weather sealed Fujifilm cameras and they’ve eaten quite a lot of dust, too, but it’s still a reassuring feature to have.

When you're playing with flour, it's good to have a weather sealed body and lens to keep the stuff on your model and not in your camera. 

Of course, ideally, you then have to pair the camera with a weather proofed lens as well, such as the beautiful XF-16 mm 1.4. I love that lens because, thanks to its wide aperture, it still allows me to play with shallow depth of field although it’s relatively wide-angle.

Belgium's probably got he ugliest coast line in the world (40 miles of ugly concrete skyscrapers) but there are a couple of noteworthy exceptions, such as this the Blankenberge Pier. Working this close to sea and sand, I was happy to be using a weather-sealed combo. Processed with my Colorific Colour Grading presets, but you probably know that by now :-)

One of my resolutions for the new year is to use the 16 mm prime a little more. I used a Formatt Hitech ND filter to get the exposure within reach of the new 1/250th sync speed.

7) Flash improvements

This one is pretty big, at least for me: the sync speed has been increased to 1/250th of a second. That means that when you’re working at the sync speed of your camera, your flashes effectively become one third of a stop more powerful than they were on an X-Pro 1 or an X-T1.

Sofie shot with the X-Pro 2 and the Jinbei HD-600 II flash. To date, still my favourite 'big gun'. I'm very happy that I can now use flash also in Continuous shooting mode. This lets me fire a burst of shots (until the flash has to recharge) rather than one at a time so I dramatically increase my options of having the right expression or composition when using flash). Image postprocessed with my Black & White Lightroom presets.

But even better, you can now also use a flash when the camera is set to continuous shooting. To be fair, it’s something almost every other camera has but it’s great to see that my X-Pro 2 now does it, too. Especially with more powerful flashes like this Jinbei, this means that you can keep on shooting with flash at lower power settings for quite a while until the flash has to recharge. This is the same feature by the way that got introduced for the X-T1 in the latest firmware update that subsequently got pulled because of a bug. So X-T1 users, this one is coming your way, too!

Finally, Fujifilm have announced a new speedlight, the EF-X500, that is capable of doing High Speed Sync. I can't wait to get my hands on that one!

8) Improved Bracketing

I’ve never understood why the bracketing functionality of all Fujifilm cameras was limited to 3 shots with +/-  1 EV. If you want to create HDR images, that range is often too limited.

Maybe it has something to do with the new maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second, but you can now bracket 3 shots with +/- 2 EV. I would still love some more options, like shooting 5 or 7 frames but it's already a big step up. If you want to go beyond what's currently possible, I recommend you do as I do: put the camera on a tripod and use the Exposure Compensation function on the Camera Remote App: this lets you make up to 7 bracketed shots, 1 stop apart, without touching the camera.

9) An improved menu

Image © Fujifilm Corporation

I already like Fujifilm’s menus more than most of the other brands out there, but they have made the menu even better: it’s more legible and there’s also a MyMenu, which lets you assign up to 16 items for quick acess. So between this MyMenu, the (customizable) Quick Menu and the function buttons, there really is no shortage of options of having this camera do what you want it to do, as fast as possible. On thing that did not improve is formatting the card. It takes way too many button presses. Luckily, there appears to be a shortcut which I learned about over at Kevin Mullins' excellent review. If you're thinking about using the X-Pro 2 as a wedding camera, read his review (and then start saving). Oh, the shortcut you ask? Press the delete key for a couple of seconds and then click on the back command dial.

10) 3 Power Management Modes

Let’s be honest. Battery life isn’t the best feature of the Fujifilm cameras. But let’s also be honest in that the batteries (the X-Pro 2 uses the same as the X-T1, X-Pro 1 and X-T10) are very lightweight and compact so adding a couple to your bag won’t break your back. I think Fuji did well in maintaining the same battery. However, what they did is offer three power management modes: Economy, Standard and High Performance. As you might guess, autofocus speed and EVF refresh rates increase as you switch from the first to the latter, but battery life decreases, from 330 shots over 250 to 220. I just use High Performance and I pack a couple of spare batteries. I guess I’ll only use Economy when I see I’m popping in my last spare! Oh, and even in Economy the camera is still a Ferrari compared to the original X-Pro 1. So, as greater minds have already said: ‘Everyting is relative’.

So, that’s it for this highly subjective top 10. As some of these are firmware-related, there's some hope that they might trickle down to other cameras too.

This is what the new interface looks like. Again, evolution, not revolution but it looks and reads better than before. There are loads of smaller refinements, such as this one: you might know there's a digital depth-of-field scale that you can overlay in the EVF and OVF. Only, it did not match up with the one found on lenses like the 14, 16 and 23. Because the lenses' DOF scale was film-based (with a larger Circle of Confusion, in other words, larger tolerance) whereas the digital scale was pixel-based. You can now set the digital scale to film-based as well. If I were a street photographer, I'd love this feature!

There are other features, such as the new black and white ACROS film simulation and the new grain engine, which look nice. But as I explained in this blog post, as long as there is no Raw conversion software that can actually read the raw files of this camera, I set my film simulation to something very neutral as the JPEGs are currently the only thing I can work with. Setting a black and white film simulation would mean I currently cannot work on the image in colour and I want to keep my options open.

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to try and address them in the comments.

Don't forget to switch off the light.

What about the Tilt Screen?

Yeah, what about it? There isn't one, as you probably know by now. For me, it's not a deal breaker. Sure enough, if the X-Pro 2 had one, I would welcome it, but not if it came at the expense of a bigger, bulkier body. Between the dual card slot and a tilt screen, I'll take the dual card slot any time. Also, don't forget that you'll be able to wirelessly control the camera with the smartphone App. That's even better than a tilt screen, in some cases!

What could be improved?

Some testers have reported the Exposure Compensation wheel is too loose. It did not feel loose on my sample. What I would like is that Fujifilm offer the option of saving 16 bit TIFF files to card. I feel that Lightroom still isn't squeezing everything out of the RAW files and this would be a nice addition, especially for people who shoot rather slow and deliberate, like me. Alternatively, I wish that Fujifilm would release a simple RAW to 16 bit TIFF conversion software. Basically, a desktop-version of the in-camera RAW converter that would allow batch-processing. And no, I don't mean Silkypix, that awfully complex raw converter that ships with the camera. 

Another thing I would like is to see on the accessory list is a 'Long Eyecup' like the X-T1. This helps to block the sunlight and gives more contrast in the viewfinder which is especially helpful on sunny days.

Finally, I would really love to have some more highlight clipping information in the EVF and OVF: we can already program a gazillion warnings in the viewfinder, but the one I would like to see is a Lightroom-style highlight / shadow clipping warning, showing the actual areas that are clipped. Sure, there's the live histogram but that only says there's clipping. It does not say where that clipping occurs. 

As you can see, minor quibbles that are mostly software- or firmware related. Other than that, I really can't think of much. So now, I'm off to shoot some more! Where did I put my spare batteries?

Two months with the X-Pro 2: my 10 favourite features (part 1)

So, I’ve had the privilige of using a pre-production sample of one of this year’s most eagerly anticipated cameras for a couple of weeks. You could already read about that in this blog post. By now, your RSS feed and Facebook status page is probably overloaded with features, comparisons, opinions and what not. The following thoughts are not solely based on specs, but on actual usage of the camera. Given the four year gap between the X-Pro 2 and its predecessor, there’s bound to be a lot of change. In this and the following blog post, I’ll try to outline my personal top-10 improvements of this camera, taking into account the way I use it: as my everday camera, with a focus on travel- and flash photography.

Two of my favourite models: Brecht & Frannie. Shot in an abandoned carpet factory. On urbex (urban exploring) shoots like this, I appreciate the fact that all my camera gear fits in my F-Stop Loka UL, a small and lightweight camera backpack (US link, EU link)

Evolution on the outside...

When I got the camera, it felt like reconnecting with an old friend: it looks almost identical to the X-Pro 1 (which I consider a good thing), especially from the front. In fact, I could probably have taken this camera to a Fuji workshop and people would have thought I was shooting my old trusted X-Pro 1. Outside, there are only a couple of changes, and they're all for the better.

Seen from the front, not a lot has changed: the EVF/OVF lever now not only lets you switch from OVF to EVF, but also between the two OVF modes that we now know from the X100T. Another barely visible - but interesting - new feature is the addition of a front command dial. Image © Fujifilm Corporation.

... revolution within

But on closer inspection, a lot has actually changed for the better. Which brings me to the first point.

1) Improved ergonomics

This one’s so important that I’ve actually put it before the ‘obvious’ advantage (the higher megapixel count, more about that later). The first thing you’ll notice is the joystick on the camera’s back: it has a number of uses but its main use is changing the AF point. The advantage is that this frees up the four buttons surrounding the Menu/OK button. You can now actually program three of them to a custom function. If you like to change your focus points as I do, the joystick works really well, it just takes some getting used to and retraining your muscle memory not to go to the old position. On top of that, there’s 2 more function buttons, bringing the total to 5. There is no dedicated WIFI function button, but WIFI is obviously included, and another big difference with the original X-Pro 1.

Apparently small changes but ergonomically big ones: all buttons are now on the right hand side, enabling true single-handed operation. There's a new joystick-like control that - amongst other things - lets you select your focus point. Image © Fujifilm Corporation.

• One thing I did not like about the X-Pro 1 was that there were some buttons on the left of the LCD. All buttons are now at the right, meaning you can control this camera with just one hand. For you, it might be sipping cocktails, but in my case it leaves the other hand free to hold a flash and an umbrella, for example.
• The grip is slightly bigger and more pronounced. As a result, the camera feels better in your hand. And as mentioned, this is now a camera that you can completely control with one hand! Great news for photographers who like to smoke on a shoot. No more cigarette breaks needed: smoke and shoot as you go!
• There’s also a new Front Command Dial which in playback mode lets you browse flick back and forth through your images (the rear one zooms in and out). While shooting, the FCD lets you adjust the shutter speed to the intermediary settings between the full stops that are marked on the dial. It probably does some other things too, but I haven’t discovered those yet. The manual was even more preproduction than the camera (in other words, non-existent!)

Those clever Fujifilm engineers incorporated the ISO dial into the Shutter Speed dial. To change your ISO, pull up the outside of the dial and rotate it. The EV-compensiation wheel now has a -3 to +3 range and by setting it to the C-position, you can even go from -5 to +5 by turning the new Front Command Dial. Image © Fujifilm Corporation.

• Speaking of dials. Probably the coolest feature is how Fujifilm managed to integrate the ISO dial on the top of the camera. It’s literally on the shutter speed dial: you have to pull the outer ring of the shutter speed dial up and then rotate it to set the ISO. The first couple of times, you’ll probably inadvertently change the shutter speed itself, too, but once you get used to it, it works very well. While turning the wheel, you can see the value adjust in the viewfinder. So no need to take your eye off the viewfinder. Now, in honesty, I liked the old system with the top function button, too but this system has the advantage that you can also see at a glance what ISO the camera is set to. And I do like this implementation more than that of the X-T1. While we’re still talking about dials: the Exposure Compensation dial now has a -3 to +3 range and even a Custom setting that allows you to go from -5 to +5, another use for the new Front Command Dial.
• And finally, another big one in the ergonomics department: a built-in diopter adjustment with the same range as the X-T1. That’s right, no more messing around with little screw-in adjustment lenses that you’re bound to loose sooner or later.

2) 24 Megapixel X-Trans CMOS III Sensor

Same APS-C sensor size but 50 percent more pixels. Image © Fujifilm Corporation.

Although I’ve printed images from my 16 MP X-T1 as large as 30 x 60 cm (12 x 24 inch) and I could easily print even larger, I welcome more pixels any time, provided they offer me the same or even higher image quality. The X-Pro 2 has got 50 percent more of them. So, you can either print prints that are 50 percent larger (in terms of surface, i.e. 22 percent longer and 22 percent taller) or you can crop 1/3 of your image away and still keep the same amount of pixels as the X-Pro 1 or the X-T1. Another nice advantage is that you can experiment some more with alternative crops, like 16:9, or square, while still retaining enough pixels to print relatively big. Especially with the best quality lenses like the 16-55 and the 50-140, the increased resolution actually shows in the image. Those two lenses really are perfect companions for the new sensor.

I have really come to appreciate the 16-55. Sure, it's a bit big and heavier than its prime siblings but boy, what a sharp and versatile lens! If you're an event or press photographer, it's hard not to be impressed by its sharpness. Model: Stéphanie. Image processed with my Lightroom Colorific Colour Grading presets.

3) Faster AF, more focus points and more phase detection pixels

As you might know, cameras use two techniques to achieve autofocus: phase detection and contrast detection. The first is faster, the latter is more accurate. As of the X-T1, Fujifilm has started to combine these two techniques by incorporating phase detection pixels in the sensor. The X-Pro 2 increases both the total number of focus points available and the number of phase detection pixels. By default, there’s 77 points including 49 phase detection pixels, but you can increase this to a whopping 273 points, including 169 phase detection pixels. Just be prepared to use that new joystick controller a lot. Regardless of the number of focus points, what I really appreciate on mirrorless cameras in general and those by Fuji in particular, is that you have focus points all over the frame. If you like to frame your subject off-center, that’s a very handy feature to have. With a DSLR, you’ll be forced to focus and recompose, but if you’re shooting with a shallow depth of field, that can lead to images that are out of focus.

"And how many focus points would you like today, Sir?" I don't think I'll be using the 273 focus points layout a lot...

... but I do like the fact that there are more phase detection pixels (you can recognise them by their slightly larger size in the grid...

I really cannot count the times I have sworn at my DSLR for not giving me a focus point where I needed it. With 273 points to choose from, that’s no longer necessary! Of course, the same AF enhancements that were introduced with the X-T1’s 4.0 firmware upgrade, such as wide tracking AF and zone AF are also present. I just haven’t used them much as most of my subjects are pretty stationary and if they aren’t, like the dancers I shoot, I prefer to pre-focus manually. It’s a matter of habit and preference.

4) Improved viewfinder

Take the hybrid viewfinder of the X-100T, add the resolution of the viewfinder of the X-T1, and turbocharge the framerate to 85 frames per second and you have the recipe for the X-Pro 2’s viewfinder. It’s really as state of the art as it gets. The front lever lets you switch between EVF and OVF and also between OVF modes themselves: simple OVF or OVF with the little EVF screen in the bottom right corner that was introduced with the X100T. This little screen-in-the-screen can be set to three possible zoom levels when you’re in manual focus.

The Hybrid Viewfinder combines the best of both worlds...

... especially since you can overlay a little LCD panel that for accurate framing...

... or manual focus checking options: choose from 100%, 2.5 x en 6 x.

The first is 100 percent view (which basically gives you a mini view of the entire scene in your OVF, ideal for combining the precision of the EVF with the bright viewfinder of the OVF. The second is 2.5 times enlarged and the third is 6 times enlarged. Pressing the rear command dial (you knew that the rear command dial can be depressed, also on the X-T1, didn’t you?) cycles through these magnification levels. Combine those features with manual focus aids such as digital split-level or – what I prefer to use – focus peaking and you have noone to blame but yourself if your pictures aren’t sharp using manual focus on the X-Pro 2! 

5) Dual Card Slot

I haven’t verified this, but according to Fujifilm, this is a first on a mirrorless camera. I know a lot of wedding photographers and generally everyone that shoots unique events that will utter sighs of relief. The card slot can be set to any of the following three options: sequential (when the first card is full, the camera starts writing to the second), backup (anything written to the first card is also written to the second) and RAW/JPEG, where RAW files are written to one card and JPEG files are written to the other.

Needless to say, the write speed to card has also dramatically improved. I remember that on the X-Pro 1, when I accidentally shot a bracketed series of photos, I swore because the camera would freeze up, literally for seconds. None of that on the X-Pro 2. I do recommend that you use fast cards. My sample unit had two Toshiba 16 GB Exceria Pro SD cards installed (the ones with the double row of contacts) and that worked perfectly.

That's it for the first 5 features. In this blog post, I'll cover 6 to 10. But let me leave you with one last image of Stéphanie. After all, it's all about the image, not about the camera, isn't it?

Honoured, humbled, frightened and excited: 2 months with the X-Pro 2

When a while back, Fujifilm offered me the opportunity to test a pre-production sample of the upcoming X-Pro 2, I felt honoured, humbled, frightened and excited all at the same time.

Honoured, because I was one of a limited number of photographers worldwide to receive an early sample. Humbled, because the list of the others included big name photographers that I regard very highly, such as Damien Lovegrove, David Hobby and Zack Arias, to name but a few. Compared to these guys, I'm just a grown-up kid with too many cameras, too many lenses and waaaay to many flashes. I felt like taking a shower with the highschool football team. When I had just been out in the freezing cold...

“You know the old joke ‘How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb?”

Frightened because I had a tight deadline to give Fujifilm four images, preferably from different shoots. Four images that would be looked at, pixel-peeped, scrutinized by the whole world. Four images of which Fujifilm would choose one to display during the Fujifilm X Series Five Year Anniversary Exhibition in Tokyo. You know how photographers can be ruthless for each other’s work. I couldn’t help but think of the old joke: "How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb?" The answer is: "Eleven: one to actually fix the bulb and ten to comment afterwards about how that one guy could have done it better."

Charleroi, one of Belgium's old industrial cities. I scouted this cool location without ever leaving my house, thanks to Google Maps and Google Street View. The actual hike up the hill made me appreciate a lightweight camera system like the X-Series even more. Hills definitely look lower from Google Earth than they do when you're standing in front of them! My original plan was to do a Long Exposure here, but the wind was so strong I could not keep the camera steady enough.

Excited

But I also felt excited: I had been slaving away at my new Lightroom book for months (the Dutch version is available now and the English version is in layout) and I hadn’t really been photographing a lot. This opportunity and the deadline it included gave me a much needed kick in the butt. So I rustled up some models, fired up Google Maps and Google Street View to scout some cool locations, charged the battery of my Jinbei flash, dusted off my Formatt Hitech ND’s and my B+W Vari ND's (Dutch link, English link) and planned a couple of shoots.

Shooting JPEG (and actually liking it)

It was freezing cold but model Stéphanie was a real champ. Shot with one of my favourite lenses: the 10-24 mm. I used the Jinbei HD600 II and the Phottix Luna Folding Softbox. In very contrasty, backlit situations like these, it's good to have an Optical Viewfinder, too. Especially the X100T-like one, where you can still have a small EVF inserted in the bottom right corner to help you with your composition. The X-Pro 2 also has a 1/3rd stop faster sync speed than the X-T1, which comes in very handy when you're trying to overpower the sun in bright daylight.

The camera being a pre-production sample, the camera’s firmware was also still beta, so there were a couple of limitations. First of all, the ‘Preview Exposure and White Balance in Manual Mode’ feature was not working on my sample. It’s a feature I rely on heavily when using flash, because it lets me easily set the desired ambient exposure. However, my model will generally be too dark in this mode, so once I’ve determined how dark or bright I want the background to be, I will switch this mode off.

“I use the ‘Preview Exposure and White Balance in Manual Mode’ so much that I’ve assigned a function button to it.”

I’ve even dedicated one of the function buttons to it. To assign a function to a function button, press and hold it for a couple of seconds and then choose the desired function from the list that appears. When off, the EVF goes to a normal brightness level so you can choose your composition and your focus point more easily. Being able to switch between both views and having a live histogram is one of the key advantages of mirrorless cameras. Needless to say, the feature will work as expected on shipping X-Pro 2’s.

Another thing that slightly worried me was the fact that there was no RAW support yet. In fact, there still isn’t (as is always the case with new cameras). As a Lightroom user, author and trainer, I eat RAW files for breakfast. Although I love the quality of Fuji’s out-of-camera JPEG files (they’re probably the best in the whole camera industry), I prefer to shoot at least RAW + JPEG for the added postprocessing leeway that RAW files give me. Partly, that’s for creative reasons, as I like to edit my images quite elaborately but partly it’s also to cover up for the underexposure mistakes I sometimes make while shooting. When you know your way around Lightroom, you run the risk of becoming a sloppy photographer because you know the tricks to cover your ass after the shoot.  

Just like David DuChemin, I firmly believe in Vision-Driven Postprocessing. I always try to maximise the mood in my images to make them convey what I felt at capture time. As you can see from the behind-the-scenes shot, this image was actually taken during the day, but I thought the loneliness I felt from shooting from the top level of a parking lot, would be better expressed by a "dusky" postprocessing. I used one of my Colorific Colour Grading presets.

Old X-Pro 1 shoots new X-Pro 2 :-) This is what the scene really looked like. The dusky atmosphere was added in post. I was surprised to see that even a JPEG could survive this much postproduction, so that's very promising for the RAW files!

For that reason, I chose to shoot with the Standard Profile, rather than with Classic Chrome which I normally prefer: that film simulation blocks the shadows and without the fallback option of a raw file, I preferred to keep my options open. The X-Pro 2 also has a new Black & White film simulation and a new grain feature, but I did not test that for the same reason.

In this blog post, I will list my top 10 favourite features of this incredible new camera. To conclude this post, I was amazed with the quality of the JPEG files and the flexibility they still offered in terms of further processing. It almost made me wish Fuji would offer an option to save images as 16 bit TIFFs: you would get the benefit of near-raw like editing options along with the beautiful out-of-camera film simulations.

So, these were the four images I submitted to Fujifilm. I’m as curious as you to know which one they picked for the 5 Year X anniversary exhibition. I hope they picked at least one. And even if they haven't, I still had a hell of a time shooting! For me, the X-Pro 2 is already a fantastic camera: it made me get up from my couch and go shoot. Isn't that what all good cameras should do?

This location, an abandoned cooling tower, had been on my to-do list for quite some time. But writing books, magazine articles, creating Lightroom presets and changing the occasional diaper kept coming in the way. The X-Pro 2 deadline was the necessary kick in the butt to finally load up my F-Stop Loka UL backpack and go explore. And that's probably what I like most about Fujifilm cameras: they inspire me to just go out and shoot, experiment, learn from my mistakes and shoot some more.

My trusted F-Stop Loka UL backpack and me at the foot of the hill overlooking Charleroi.

My favourite new camera with my favourite old lens: the 10-24. I think I make about half of my shots with that lens. In fact, three of the four images on this page were shot with it.

All images in this blog post are JPEG images coming from a pre-production X-Pro 2. They were processed in Adobe Lightroom with my Colorific Lightroom presets. A big thanks to Serge from www.fotografieblog.be for the behind-the-scenes shots (made with an X-Pro 1).

5 Reasons the RoboSHOOT X flash triggers for Fuji are a game changer

In a week or so, Fujifilm will be celebrating their fifth anniversary of the X-system. I know very few camera companies that have created such a fantastic camera eco-system in such a short time. My switch from a fullframe DSLR was a gradual one: I started with the X-Pro 1 in 2012. It was the appeal of having a lightweight, unobtrusive camera for my travels that won me over. Or, as my colleague and Fujifilm X-Photographer Matt Brandon says, 'I came for the size, i stayed for the quality'.

Yet, it took some adjusting: I love two things: flash and wide angle and neither were very developed at the start of the X-series: the widest lens was an 18 mm (27 mm in fullframe terms) and being used to 16 or even 14 mm on my fullframe DSLRs, 27 mm felt like I was looking through a telescope. However, in four years, Fujifilm have developed a lens line-up that is very complete, at least for my needs. If I were a Nikon or Canon crop DSLR shooter, I guess I'd be very jealous of the available lenses. There's everything from super wide angle over fast zooms and primes to telephoto. And rumour has it that the long-awaited 100-400 mm super telephoto will also be announced in the coming weeks. My favorite lenses currently are the 10-24 f/4 and the 56 f/1.2, although recently I've been very impressed with the sharpness of the 16-55, too! In fact so much that I only use the already excellent 10-24 in the 10-16 range and then I switch it out for the 16-55. 

“I came for the Size, I stayed for the Quality”

— Matt Brandon

Flash photography on the X-system

But I digress. I wanted to talk about flash: it's no secret that flash is the probably the least developed part of the Fujifilm X-series. That's not completely by lack of want from Fujifilm's part. Apparently, Fujifilm were going to develop a wireless TTL system in collaboration with German manufacturer Metz but that plan either got tanked or at least postponed due to the latter's bad financial situation. Luckily, things are improving. For example, the X-Pro 2 is rumoured to have a sync speed of 1/250th instead of 1/180th of a second on the X-T1. That makes any flash about 30 percent more powerful (at least when working at the sync speed). 

Fujifilm and TTL flash

So, it's not like you can't do flash with a Fuji. There are just less TTL whistles and HSS bells :-) All of the X-series cameras have a hotshoe and there are a couple of TTL flashes available, such as the EF-42 or my personal favourite: the Nissin i40, a review of which will follow shortly. The EF-42 might be the most powerful one, the i40 is the most fun to use and also the most balanced in terms of size and weight, at least when you want to use it on-camera. These flashes will work both in manual and in TTL, but the latter only on-camera.

If you want to use off-camera flash, up to now you are limited to using manual flashes and triggers. For manual use, I recommend the Godox V850 and the FT16s trigger, reviewed here or the Cactus RF60 and V6 trigger. If I need more power, for example when I want to overpower the sun in sunny India in the middle of the day, I turn to my big bazooka: the Jinbei HD600 II, a review of which you can read here.

A holiday snapshot: with kids never sitting still, TTL is a handy feature to have. In this case, I used the Lastolite Trifold collapsible umbrella. It folds down so small you have no excuse not to have one in your camera bag.

All these off-camera flash options work well but they are manual-only. Although I have no problem working in manual (and sometimes even prefer it), there are times when having TTL remote control of my flash would be great. Especially for those instances where you have to work fast and/or when your subject is moving around in the frame, like my 2.5 year old son likes to do. Manual flash is a pain when the flash-to-subject distance changes a lot, because of that damn inverse square law. I can safely say that my toddler is responsible for my renewed interest in off-camera TTL flash photography!  When I'm on holidays and I want to take a family snap (I always have the Nissin i40 with me), TTL is great to have because my mind does not have to think as hard. After all, it's on holidays, too!

TTL with a cable

Up to now, there was only one workaround to do off-camera TTL flash with a Fuji camera and that was to use - oddly enough - a Canon flash sync cable. Yes, a cable! How very hipster retro :-) For example in this shoot of Dutch supermodel Rosalinde Kirkstra, I used a 10 meter Phottix OC-E3 flash cable. The downside of this is that it's not exactly practical, but it works. If the prospect of cloning out 10 meter of flash cable from some of your shots does not particularly entice you, please read on!

At 1/1000th of a second, the tiny Nissin i40 becomes as powerful as a couple of regular speedlights. In this case I used a 10 meter Phottix OC-E3 TTL cable, but wireless triggering is so much handier. The modifier I used for this shoot is the fantastic SMDV 70 cm Speedbox. 

RoboSHOOT to the rescue

Then I heard about a new company, Serene Automation, that were developing TTL flash triggers for Fujifilm cameras. I contacted them and they were kind enough to send me a (pre-production) review sample of their top-of-the-line triggers: the RX-20 receiver and the MX-20 trigger. And they work like a charm. Below I've listed five reasons why, if you're even remotely interested in using flash on your Fujifilm X-cameras, you should seriously consider these triggers.

The MX-20 Trigger Unit

The RX-20 Receiver Unit

1 RoboSHOOT triggers allow TTL flash off camera, straight out of the box

This shot of Frannie and Brecht was made with the tiny but very capable Nissin i40 for Fujifilm and the SMDV 70 cm Speedbox. And of course the RoboSHOOT RX-20 and MX-20. I set one of the custom function buttons on the X100T to Flash Exposure Compensation. I also used Fuji's wide angle converter.

For many people, this reason alone should be enough to order a set. You attach the receiver to a Fujifilm compatible flash like the EF-42 or the i40 and put the trigger on your camera, enable the flash on the camera and you're good to go. If it does not work, it's generally because you've either set your camera to Silent Mode, or you're in one of the settings that disables the flash hotshoe. This happens for example when you're in Continuous shooting mode. Fujifilm has already said they would come out with a firmware that allows flashes (and therefore also triggers) on the hotshoe to fire while shooting in Continuous mode. In fact, the recent 4.20 X-T1 firmware update was supposed to install that but it got withdrawn because of a bug. I also recommend that when 'installing' the trigger, you make sure the little safety pin on the trigger aligns nicely with the corresponding hole in the hotshoe, before you tighten the wheel on the trigger.

The SMDV Speedbox 70 is one of my favourite modifiers for use with small flashes. It has a nice quality of light and it sets up and folds down in seconds. I got mine from the friendly people at www.foto-morgen.de. It's a German website but they sprechen English too :-)

Contrary to the cable solution I described above, which limits you to only using one off-camera flash, the RoboSHOOT X-system lets you work with multiple flashes off-camera. There's four different groups you can assing flashes to, you just need an equal number of receivers. A smartphone App (iOS and Android), then lets you set TTL flash compensation (more on that later).

Most of the time, I only use one remote flash, though. In those instances, I find it easier and faster to change the flash exposure compensation on the camera. Here's a quick tip: you can either set the Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) as one of the items in your Quick menu or, faster still, you can assign a function button to FEC: to do so, simply press and hold the function button of your choice for a couple of seconds and then choose FEC from the list of available options. It works like a charm.

2 The MX-20/RX-20 combo does TTL with Nikon compatible flashes

Let me say that again: this system allows you to use (specific) Nikon flashes with your Fujifilm cameras. Off camera. In TTL! I don't know how John (founder of Serene Automation) pulled this one off, but he did! This is great news for 2 reasons: first of all, quite a number of Fujifilm users either have switched from Nikon or they use Fuji gear in addition to their Nikon cameras. In both cases, chances are that they have already lying an SB-900 around.

This shot of lovely Stéphanie was lit at 1/2000th of a second at f/7.1 with a single Nikon SB-900 speedlight! I again used the SMDV 70 cm Speedbox, which I not only love for its lighting characteristics but also because it's a breeze to set up and take down.

Below is the current compatibility table. As more people will use these triggers with different kinds of third-party flashes, the list will probably grow. For example, I have successfully tried the triggers with Phottix' excellent Mitros+ for Nikon. Others have reported them to work with the Metz 52 AF-1 and the Yongnuo 568 EX.

Compatibility table of Fujifilm and Nikon flashes. I've personally tested the Nissin i40 and the Nikon SB-900.

But there's a second reason why this is such a big deal. Even when you don't have Nikon flashes lying around, you might actually consider picking one up or buying a used one because, as great as the Nissin i40 is, it's nowhere near as powerful as an SB-900 or an SB-910. Especially when you're working outside or with a diffuser, you'll quickly reach the limits of the i40. Unless... you're using it on the X100T, which brings me seamlessly to the next advantage:

3 The triggers support the high sync speed of the X100T

One current disadvantage of the Fujifilm flash system is that there is no High Speed Sync (HSS): you're stuck, both on- and off-camera, to whatever sync speed your camera has. In the case of the X-T1, that's only 1/180th of a second. As HSS support is a combination of camera, flash and trigger, I currently cannot say whether the Roboshoot triggers will support High Speed Sync if/when it comes out. But having gotten to know the CEO a little, I would not be surprised. However, Fujifilm have a bit of an odd one out with the X100T: this camera uses a leaf shutter which allows for a 'regular' sync speed of up to 1/2000th of a second. In fact, this sync speed is so fast that you can freeze motion or overpower the sun with a simple speedlight. At those sync speeds, the trigger sometimes becomes the limiting factor as some triggers' electronics simply aren't fast enough to take advantage of that high sync speed. The Roboshoot triggers are: I have succesfully used them on my X100T with shutter speeds of up to 1/2000th of a second. At these shutter speeds, the tiny i40 can almost overpower daylight and a Nikon SB900 becomes as powerful as the four times heavier Jinbei. The RoboSHOOT triggers are designed to work with all Fujfilm X cameras. They have been tested with the X-T1, X-Pro 1 and X100T. Personally, I use them the most with my X100T as you can see from the EXIF info in the images. I'm also looking forward to trying them out with a more powerful TTL flash like the Godox Witstro II. I'll report back on that as soon as I can.

4 Manual and TTL multi-flash control from a dedicated App

Using a free Android and iOS App, you have full control over up to four groups. You can set Flash Exposure Compensation and mix and match manual and TTL groups.

As you can see from the pictures, the MX-20 does not have power controls on the unit itself. Instead, when you want to use a flash in Manual mode or want to work with more than one flash in TTL and change relative FEC, you can use the free RoboSHOOT X App. This App lets you do the following:

• turn groups on or off without having to use the actual buttons on the receivers
• mix and match TTL and Manual control
• set relative FEC compensation (e.g. Group 1 +1 FEC, Group 2 -2 FEC)
• set FEC lock
• set manual power levels, from 1/1 all the way down to 1/512!

The App can do a lot more that I haven't tested, but it's really complete without being complex. Still, while having smartphone control over your flashes is great in a studio, for outdoor work, I would still prefer to be able to control power levels, FEC and groups from the transmitter itself. I would really like to see Serene Automation develop a clip-on group controller much like Pocketwizard did with the AC-3 zone controller, so the phone can stay in my pocket during the shoot. In fact, I already pitched the idea.

This image of Stéphanie was shot at 1/2000th of a second, a feature made possible by the X100T's leaf shutter and the RoboSHOOT triggers. Not all radio triggers support these high sync speeds. If you have an X100T and you like flash, the RoboSHOOT triggers are a no-brainer! I used a Nikon SB-900 and a Nissin i40. Main light was shot through the SMDV 70 Speedbox.

5 Other advanced features

If these features alone weren't enough to startle your interest, there's a couple of advanced features that I did not even use or try because I simply did not need them: you can use TTL lock, create up to four profiles that you can call up by pushing a button on the transmitter, specify delays and so on. The profiles can store advanced things like flash zoom setting, allowing you some extra pop from your flash by zooming it remotely. Wedding photographers will also appreciate the fact that there's a TTL passthrough hotshoe on the MX-20 trigger unit so you can put an on-camera fill flash on top of the trigger. It's actually even more than a simple passthrough, as it is also part of the group system that can be controlled from the App. Like I said... advanced features :-)

Conclusion

Although Serene Automation also produce a more basic trigger-receiver combo (the MX-15 / RX-15) I would recommend getting the more powerful and versatile MX-20 / RX-20 combo. The product page on the website gives you more info on the differences and specifications of the units. If you're only interested in manual off-camera flash, the MX-20 and RX-20 flash triggers are probably overcomplete and there are simpler and cheaper options available like the ones mentioned above. However, if you want to be able to use TTL off camera and/or if you have an X100T and/or if you still have some Nikon SB-900's or SB910's lying around, then these triggers are almost a must-buy.

At $380 for a set, they aren't cheap, but bear in mind that flash photography on Fujifilm is somewhat of a niche market and most importantly, they're currently your only option anyway. So considering the fact that Serene Automation basically has a monopoly right now on this kind of trigger and considering the relatively small market, the R&D that must have gone into it and the advanced features, I think they're actually reasonably priced.

You can order them directly from Serene Automation. If you live in Belgium or Holland (or elesewhere in Europe) and want to avoid potential hassle with customs and VAT, you'll be pleased to know there's an importer for the Benelux, VDH Photo. They will be able to tell you which camera shops will retail these units.

What I liked

• They're the first (and only) TTL off-camera flash triggers that currently exist for Fujifilm cameras
• Let you use selected Nikon and Nikon-compatible flashes in TTL with your Fujifilm camera
• Advanced feature set (MX-20/RX-20)
• Free iOS and Android App
• Super fast sync speed (ideal for X100T users)
• Support for rear/second curtain sync (haven't tried it myself but I know a lot of people want this)
• Continuous shooting (introduced in the faulty and now revoked 4.20 X-T1 update) will be supported once Fuji re-releases the updated firmware.

What could be improved

• Manual power control of individual flashes or groups of flashes and FEC of groups of flashes only via App. A hardware option would be great
• Price (but in fairness, these are Serene Automation's top of the line triggers. The RX-15/MX-15 bundle is about 30 percent cheaper). The RX-15 does not let you use Nikon speedlights in TTL and the MX-15 does not work with the App.

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Like the look of these images? Flash is a (big) part of it, but there's also the toning and styling that is done in postproduction: all images were postprocessed using my Lightroom Colorific Presets pack. You can learn more about these presets here.

If you're new to off-camera flash, my Making Light and Making Light 2 eBooks might come in handy. 

The 5 Day Deal: Save over 95 percent on top-notch photography training!

Chances are that by the end of this week, your inbox will be overflowing with emails about the 5 Day Deal. Even more, I'll put in my own two cents through my mailing list, Facebook and Twitter. The reason is that if you're reading this blog, you're interested in photography education in general and in postprocessing in particular. And that's what the 5 Day Deal has to offer. In spades. It's an unmissable opportunity to learn a lot about photography and image editing for relatively little money. Oh, and in the mean time, you get to do some charity as well. Where's the catch? There isn't. Other than you'll be needing a good internet connection to download all the stuff!

What is the 5 Day Deal?

The 5 Day Deal is a bundle of photography-related training videos, eBooks, Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions and the like. These are offered at a bundle-price of $127 (+ VAT for Europeans, if you have a valid VAT-number, you can order VAT-free). So far the 'Deal'-part. The '5 Day' part means the Deal is only valid for five days: from now until September 15th.

All the instructors are big names in their field so this bundle really is 'All Killer, No Filler'. To name but a few of the 20 photographers and retouchers: Lindsay Adler and Jeremy Cowart (portrait photography), Zack Arias (flash photography) and Serge Ramelli (French Lightroom-instructor, who's worth checking out if only for his super-enthusiast French accent. It's like being taught Lightroom by 'Inspector Clouseau'!) And let's not forget Joel Grimes (flash photography and compositing in Photoshop). Even yours truly is featured in the list!

Lindsay Adler's excellent course is but one of over 40 training resources in this bundle.

When purchased separately, the total bill of these resources would amount to over $3300. Now, they can be yours for less than 5 percent of that price. Or a discount of over 95 percent! Even if you're only interested in half of this bundle's content, the 5 Day Deal is a great deal to fill your iPad with training and reading material for the coming winter. Some of the over 40 training titles separately cost more than the entire bundle.

And, as the proverbial cherry on the pie, a part of the sale goes to charity! More on that later.

Yes but is there also something interesting for me?

Of course, I cannot decide for you, but I've already had a sneek peak and below is my personal, highly subjective top-10.

1. Zack Arias - On Assignment - The Art of the Editorial
   Flash expert, Fujifilm user and all-round nice guy Zack Arias takes you behind the scenes of a couple of commercial editorial shoots. You can see how Zack tackles challenges and makes the best of a situation and an environment and turns these into really nice portraits. On top of that, this tutorial is brand new! What can I say? I love Zack! 
2. Joel Grimes - Start To Finish Tutorials
   Joel Grimes is a US commercial photographer with a signature (and oft-copied) style. He's also known for his compositing work. The 5 Day Deal brings you two of his training videos. 
3. Jimmy McIntyre - Art of Digital Blending
   This Photoshop training teaches you all about advanced Photoshop selections and masks and introduces you to the concept of Luminosity Masking. Recommended!
4. Lindsay Adler - 5 Creative Studio Lighting Setups
   Famous New York portrait photographer Lindsay Adler shows us 5 easy yet powerful lighting setups.
5. Klaus Hermann Lightroom Preset Power Pack
   The previous 5 Day Deal had Klaus Hermann's Mask it like a Pro video training which I really liked. Now, Klaus is back with a Lightroom preset pack and a 100+ page eBook that covers all you could possibly want to know about Lightroom presets. He not only covers Develop presets (the most popular category) but also metadata presets, tool presets and so on. German thoroughness or 'Deutsche Gründlichkeit', as they say in Germany.
6. Lightroom for Landscapes
   We stay in Lightroom-territory (litterally) with this Lightroom training designed specifically for landscape photographers. It covers everything from import over editing to exporting your images. Another training that by itself costs more than the entire bundle.
7. James Brandon: POST Video Tutorial
   Photoshop wizard and acclaimed landscape photographer James Brandon shows us how he processes his images with Photoshop and he throws in a bunch of Lightroom presets just for fun!
8. The Art of Sculpting Splashes by Alex Koloskov
   This is the beauty of the 5 Day Deal: the subject of this video training interests me, but I would have a hard time paying the normal $250 price tag. Now, I don't have to: I can get this training for almost half of its suggested retail price and get dozens of other books, presets and training videos in the process!
9. Serge Ramelli - Lightroom CC Complete Training
   If you think I'm sometimes overdoing it in my Lightroom edits, wait until you see what 'PhotoSerge' does with his raw files! Personally, I find his training to be very entertaining, if only for the funny Franglais.
10. The Created Image Series Volume 2
    Last but not least this one: the video recording of last year's Created Image Seminar in Vancouver, Canada. Great motivational keynotes by David duChemin and three super-interesting lectures by Steve Simon, known for his 'The Passionate Photographer' book. 

The total value of this top-ten alone is over $1.100. And there's more, depending on your interests: a newborn photography video tutorial, Photoshop skin softening actions, a Wedding Photography Planner Guide, it just goes on and on. In fact, you can find the full list of all included resources here.

Oh, and lest I forget, you also get Clarity by Topaz Labs, a fully functional Lightroom and Photoshop plugin that is like Lightroom's Clarity slider on steroids.

The full list of all the 5 Day Deal goodies.

I am proud to be featured in The Created Image video series, which is just one of the over 40 training resources. I talk about speeding up your Lightroom workflow, Dodging and Burning and Black and White conversion. The entire 5 Day Deal bundle contains 70+ hours of video, 10+ eBooks and hundreds of Photoshop Actions and Lightroom presets.

The funny thing is that even yours truly is - indirectly - represented in the 5 Day Deal: in the Created Image Video Tutorial I mentioned earlier, you'll find three sessions in which I talk about Lightroom efficiency, Black and White and Dodging & Burning.

Did you mention something about charity?

If you need an extra push, you can always ease your conscience (or your partner) with the knowledge that 10 percent (i.e. almost $13) of every bundle sold goes to the four charities the 5 Day Deal team picked. Even more, you can opt to double that amount upon checkout and you get to choose the charity of your liking, too.

You can choose to which of these 4 charities your 10 percent goes. By default, they all get 2.5 percent. Or, if you think the 5 Day Deal's actually too cheap, you can double the amount that goes to charity, too!

Last year's 5 Day Deal gathered a whopping $200.000+ for these charities and this time they're aiming at breaking the $300.000 mark. 

All 4 charities look great, but I have a soft spot for the BOMA project, if only because my good friend David duChemin already did some pro bono work for them: if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me! Boma helps very poor women in rural African areas to the financial means to start small projects. 

I rest my case!

Disclaimer: if you purchase the 5 Day Deal bundle through the links on this page, MoreThanWords receives an affiliate commission (which cost you nothing extra, by the way). However, this does not influence my opinion about this bundle: on my blog, I only recommend things I find worthwhile. For instance, a while back, there was another bundle which I decided not to recommend because I knew this one was coming and I liked it better.

Review: The Jinbei HD 600 II: Portable Flash Power for my Fuji X cameras

There seems to be a consistent pattern among people who start to discover the wonders of off-camera flash: you start out with one speedlight, such as the excellent Godox Ving V850 which I reviewed here, and take that through its paces. Sooner or later, though, you'll encounter situations where that one speedlight just isn't powerful enough, for example on sunny days or when you want to use big diffusers. Diffusers eat flash power for breakfast! So, if you want to photograph people in sunny locations with a diffuser such as an umbrella or a softbox, like I do on my India trips, one speedlight just won't cut it. So you add a second. And a third... and possibly a fourth. 

That's where things start to become complicated and heavy and not to mention: expensive: to use all those flashes, you need special adapters such as Lastolite's Triflash or Quad Bracket or the Foursquare. Also, unless you're working with a flash like the Godox with its custom li-ion battery, working with multiple hotshoe flashes means charging a hell of a lot of batteries before you go out on a shoot, especially if those flashes require separate, battery powered triggers, too. All of a sudden, you're more like a magician juggling up to 24 rechargeable batteries (that's without counting spares) than a photographer.

That's where the more powerful, battery powered studio lights come in. When I started my research, I noticed there were quite a lot of options availble. They break down into two broad categories: the ones where the battery pack and head are separate and the ones where battery and head are integrated. Both systems have their pros and cons, but for my use (I often work alone), I wanted something integrated. It's just less fuss to set up and most of the shooting I do is rather run-and-gun (or at least as run-and-gun as using a flash allows). 

The HD-600 II and its trigger. The battery slides into the back of the flash and can be taken out by the handle. If you think 500 full power flashes won't help you through the day, separate batteries are available.

I had noticed the Profoto B1 - with that marketing campaign, who hasn't - and although it looks like a nice enough unit, both the price and the specs were a little too much for me. As I was planning on using the flash in conjunction with my Fuji X cameras, I could not use (so I did not want to pay for) features such as High Speed Sync or TTL control. So after careful deliberation I opted for a Chinese brand: the Jinbei HD 600 II. 

What's in the box?

Well, quite a lot for the price, actually: 

• the Jinbei flash head itself, obviously
• the battery
• a battery charger
• a plastic protection cap to protect the flash tube when you're transporting the flash and don't have the reflector attached to it
• a standard reflector
• two handles: one that is meant as a hand grip to handhold the flash and another that is meant to attach the flash to a light stand or tripod: I generally don't take a light stand with me when I travel but I use my 3 Legged Thing Brian tripod as a makeshift light stand - it extends to over 2 meters!
• a nice soft padded carrying case that is actually useful in the field (I'm looking at you, Elinchrom!)
• a custom trigger which also lets you remotely set the power

What are the specs?

I won't bore you too much with the technical details but suffice to say that the Jinbei is rated at a whopping 600 Wattseconds of power and that the battery lasts for about 500 full power pops before needing a recharge (separate batteries are available for purchase). The flash has a user-selectable slow or fast recycle mechanism (with the latter being not as good for the battery life) and the power can be changed (remotely or on the flash itself) from full power down to 1/128th. 

The flash takes between 0.3 to 4.5 seconds (depending on the power level) to recycle in Slow mode and between 0.3 and 3.5 seconds in Fast recycle mode. That's not blazing fast, but remember this is a battery operated flash we're talking about. Also, that four second wait is only at full power... And with 600 Ws under the hood, you won't always be working this flash at its maximum power anyway! This flash at one eight power is about as powerful as a speedlight at full power.

The Jinbei weighs a little under 2.5 kg and measures 124 x 124 x 268 mm.

It has a 5 W LED modeling light but frankly I never use it because I always use the flash outside in bright and sunny conditions anyway where any modeling light would simply be too weak.

How does it handle?

At 2.48 kgs, the Jinbei is of course a lot heavier than a traditional speedlight, although it's still a bit lighter than a Profoto B1. In fact, one of the (many) advantages of the Fuifilm X-system for me is that, since my camera system itself weighs considerably less than before, I can 'reinvest' some of those weight savings back into useful accessories. And the Jinbei sure does qualify as useful! 

Also, when you look at the power to weight ratio, it isn't so heavy anymore: depending on how you calculate, a 600 Ws flash has about the same power output as 6 to 10 regular speedlights! Try schlepping those around, let alone handholding them in the air or putting them on a light stand!

One technique I like to use is to put my subject between the sun and an umbrella'd Jinbei: the sun then acts as a rim-light, adding a nice glow around my subject while the flash provides a soft fill light. It's basically a 'two lights for the price of one' setup.

FUJIFILMX-T1 | XF56mmF1.2 R | 1-180 sec at f - 2.8 | ISO 200

For short sessions, I have no problem handholding the Jinbei. It does help though that in my other hand, I'm generally holding a relatively lightweight X-T1 with a prime lens or even an X100-T... I really love the fact that the EVF lets me previsualize the amount of ambient light I allow in my pictures but that's food for another blogpost entirely! 

The way the umbrella adapter attaches to the flash's base plate is proprietary and a little clunky, but not a deal breaker. On the plus side, this design lets you exchange the umbrella adapter with the supplied handle.

So far, so good...

If there's one gripe I have with the Jinbei, it's the fact that the proprietary mechanism of attaching any of the two supplied handles is a bit fiddly. Not that it will break or the flash will come loose, but the flash just sits a bit wobbly on the umbrella adapter. I haven't had any serious issues with it and my buddy Matt Brandon who bought the same flash after seeing me use it in Rajasthan, solved the issue by changing the screw. I just hate DIY stores!

Oh, and while I'm venting, I might as well say that the trigger is rather basic. I really wish it had an LCD so I could see the power settings but on the upside, it at least lets you change the power remotely. And it's small so it does not get in the way of my Fuji's control wheels... so maybe I should be careful what I wish for!

The Jinbei uses the popular Bowens mount which gives you loads of downright cheap to affordable modifier options. I like to use it with the Phottix Luna Folding Softbox, for example, which I can set up in under a minute. In India though, I generally use it with an umbrella: in fact, as nice as it is, I don't use the supplied carrying case but rather put the flash with a Lastolite Trifold umbrella (closed, obviously) attached to the supplied umbrella adapter in a Vanguard Heralder 38 shoulder bag. I've refitted the velcro dividers in this bag so that there's still room for my second camera body. A nice extra of this bag is that it can also hold my 3 Legged Thing Brian which I use more as a light stand than as an actual tripod! I must say that the flash and the tripod start to weigh after a day of lugging them around so I'm considering putting them in an F-Stop Loka UL backpack om my next trip. I'll let you know how that goes!

When used with an X-100T or any other camera that has a fast sync speed, the power of the Jinbei allows for extreme control over your ambient light while photographing at action-freezing speeds.

FUJIFILMX100T |  1-500 sec at f - 2.8 | ISO 400

Apparently, if you use a different trigger that Jinbei are currently working at, the HD600 II will also do high-speed sync with Nikon and Canon cameras, but not with Fuji cameras. I can't tell you much more about it as I use the Phottix Indra with my Nikon D800 whenever I want to use High Speed Sync. The Phottix, which I'll review later, is also a very powerful portable, battery operated studio flash and does TTL, too with Nikon and Canon. As such, I feel like it's more of an alternative (and a really good one!) for the Profoto B1 than for the Jinbei. 

How much does it cost?

Well, that's probably the best part of this whole review and it's also that part that will make you forgive the flash any of its few shortcomings: the whole lot (flash, reflector, charger, battery, trigger, handles and carrying case) will set you back... a little under 600 €, including 20% VAT! Which, in photography terms is cheap. Really cheap!

With 600 Ws of light at your disposal, you can turn a day scene into a night scene: this photo was shot in the early afternoon. I was able to almost completely kill the ambient light and replace it with flash light.

FUJIFILMX-T1 | XF10-24mmF4 R OIS | 1-180 sec at f - 5.0 | ISO 200

The verdict

For the money, this flash is hard to beat. It packs a lot of power in a relatively lightweight package and is easy to handle. The trigger allows you to conveniently set the power remotely and the Bowens mount is handy because there's a really wide range of affordable modifiers available for it. 

Whenever I use this flash during one of my flash workshops, people are amazed about the price/performance ratio of the Jinbei. Add to that a 2 year warranty and even if it totally falls apart on the 731st day, I'd still consider it a great bargain. 

Highly recommended!

What could be improved

• An LCD on the trigger with a power-readout would be nice
• The way the handle attaches to the flash (a bit wobbly now)

What I like

• High power: 600 Ws
• All-in-one design, no cables or separate power pack!
• At 2.5 kgs, relatively lightweight for the power
• Battery lasts some 500 full power pops
• Bowens mount means lots of affordable modifiers
• Complete package with reflector, handles and trigger
• Very competitively priced

Where can you get one?

Oddly enough, distribution of this flash is very limited here in Europe. I only found one store that carries this HD 600 II: I bought my unit at the ever so friendly guys of Fotomorgen.de, a German online reseller that has great service. They speak English (click on the Online Chat icon at the top left of their website) and if you have a VAT number, they will ship VAT-free outside of Germany. I can really recommend them. They are very knowledgeable and also carry a great range of lighting accessories.

If you're in the US, Adorama sells a rebadged version of this flash called the Flashpoint Rovelight RL-600. I believe the attachment of the handle is a little different - which can only be an improvement - but otherwise it has the same specs. It exists in two versions: one with Adorama's own mount and one with a Bowens mount just like the actual Jinbei.

FUJIFILMX-T1 | XF56mmF1.2 R | 1-180 sec at f - 1.2 | ISO 200. Without the use of a flash, the light coming in through the back wall would have been disturbingly bright.

If you want to practice your off-camera flash skills in one of the most photogenic places on earth, join Fujifilm X-photographer Matt Bandon and me on the North India Photo Tour (Feb. 14 to 24, 2016). You can learn more about this fantastic photo workshop here.

If you want to learn more about off-camera flash, then my Making Light 1 and Making Light 2 eBooks might be of interest to you.

Review: Godox V850 manual Li-ion flash: a perfect manual flash for my Fujifilm X-cameras

As mentioned in my Lighting Gear page, I currently use three types of hotshoe flashes with my Fuji X series cameras: for on-camera work where I like to have TTL support, I use Fuji's own EF-42 flash. It's relatively powerful, and especially when bouncing my flash I appreciate the fact that the TTL system automatically calculates the required output setting. However, when I use my flash off-camera, things change: there currently isn't a wireless TTL off-camera solution for Fujifilm flashes and as a result, I have been working with (and grown quite fond of) manual flashes.

Now admittedly, I never really missed TTL for off-camera work: even with my Nikon Speedlights and cameras that supported off-camera TTL, I would almost always work in manual. I like the consistency, control and repeatability that manual offers. What I do appreciate, though, is to be able to remotely change the (manual) power on my flash. The two manual flashes that I use, do exactly that, and then some.

The Godox Ving V850

In this blog post, I want to talk about the first option: the Godox Ving V850. I actually have four of them, which should already be a testament to how much I like and use them. The V850 has the following features:

• High power output (comparable to a Nikon SB-900 or a top of the line Canon speedlight): guide number of 58 at ISO 100
• 1.5 seconds recycle time in full power!
• Manual power is remotely controllable from 1:1 to 1:128 power
• The flash zoom can be changed from wide-angle to 105 mm (although not remotely)
• Support for plenty of channels via the FT-16s trigger
• Clip-on receiver takes its power from the flash
• With an optional trigger like Godox's Cells II, the V850 can do high-speed-sync with selected Nikon and Canon cameras (but not with Fuji cameras)
• Recheargeable, removeable Li-ion battery

A removable, rechargeable lithium ion battery in a flash. Canon and Nikon, why didn't you come up with this?

Lithium power, convenience and endurance in a hotshoe flash!

It's that last bullet point that made me pick up my first V850. I don't know about you, but charging or buying all those AA batteries for a regular flash soon becomes tiresome. On top of that, I will often use two or even three flashes on a shoot. If you add the batteries for the radio receivers, that means I sometimes have to charge up to 18 batteries for a shoot. That is if you're working without battery packs for your hotshoe flashes. As these typically require another 8 (eight!) AA batteries (per battery pack), the total battery count could reach fifty for a two to three flash shoot. And then of course there's the need to carry some spares. Because if one battery wears out prematurely, the entire flash or trigger becomes unreliable. 

 

The lithium ion battery in the V850 lasts over 500 full power pops. Try doing that with AA's! It's simply amazing and it's strange that no other hotshoe flash manufacturer is currently offering this.

What's in the box?

The V850 comes with a stand, a carrying pouch (which unfortunately lacks some straps), one battery and a charger. This is the 'Kit' version. There's also a version without the charger (e.g. if you want to buy a second flash and don't need an extra charger).

The FT-16s Trigger and Receiver combo

If you want to control the flash remotely, I suggest you get an FT 16s trigger receiver combo. Especially if you only use one flash off camera (or two flashes in the same group), then this trigger is adequate enough. If you want to work with multiple flashes in different groups, setting and changing power on those flashes becomes a little more convoluted but it can still be done. I found that the buttons and wheels (especially the one where you set the channel) are quite prone to being inadvertently changed, e.g. when you take your camera or flash out of your camera bag. So it's good to double-check your settings. Or, use gaffer tape to nail down settings you don't want to change. And while you're using the gaff tape, set some aside to attach the receiver to the flash because it comes of really easy. These are minor inconveniences but you just have to be aware of them. Other than that, the V850 and the trigger are super easy to operate.

Pricing and availability

In Europe, the V850 costs around 169 €. Theres's also a kit version with an FT 16s trigger and a receiver that offers substantial savings over buying the flash and the trigger separately. It's available from online retailers such as cameratools.nl in the Netherlands and artencraft.be in Belgium. Prices can vary by as much as 20 percent so check around! Outside of Europe, the V850 is even cheaper. Again, it pays to check around.

The verdict

All in all, for the money this flash is hard to beat and I highly recommend it for anyone who does not need TTL in an off-camera flash. If you are a Nikon or Canon user, this flash is also available with TTL (as the Godox V860N or V860C, respectively).

Pros

• Great value for money
• Power can be set remotely
• Incredible autonomy: up to 600 full power flashes on a single charge
• No more lugging AA batteries around
• Receiver takes its power from the flash: one less set of batteries to worry about!
• Li-ion Battery is removable, so you can swap it out for a spare fresh one
• Supports high-speed sync on Nikons and Canons with a dedicated trigger

Cons:

• Triggering options could be a little more sophisticated, especially when using multiple flashes (but it works)
• Clip-on receiver is easy to get lost and/or inadvertently change the settings (so use velcro or gaffer tape to attach it firmly, as I do)
• there is a sync port but it's a 2.5 mm one instead of the more convenient 3.5 mm one (which lets you use simple audio cables without a 3.5 to 2.5 mm adapter).

Some images

After all, gear is only a tool to create images, right? So, to finish this blog post, I want to show you some of my India images that I made using one or two of my Godox flashes in combination with my Fuji cameras. Most of these images were shot through a Lastolite Trifold collapsible umbrella and when I combined two flashes for power, I used a Lastolite double bracket.

Tea Stall in Rajasthan

Nomad life, Ladakh

Snake Charmers. Jaipur

Rickshaw drivers, Jaipur

Nomad life, Ladakh

Voice activated light stand Alou with two Godox flashes, a Lastolite dual flash bracket and a Trifold umbrella

---

If you want to practice your off-camera flash skills in one of the most photogenic places on earth, join Fujifilm X-photographer Matt Bandon and me on the North India Photo Tour (Feb. 14 to 24, 2016). You can learn more about this fantastic photo workshop here.

If you want to learn more about off-camera flash, my Making Light 1 and Making Light 2 eBooks can be of help. Priced at only $ 6 each, they're very affordable and will teach you all you need to know to get up and running with off-camera flash!