The Godox Lux Jr. made me love manual exposure again
The Godox Lux Jr.’s retro look is a great match for the compact, vintage-inspired Fuji X-T5 body.
When I first started photography as a serious hobby after buying a Nikon DSLR, I shot almost exclusively in manual mode. All that changed when I got into Fujifilm mirrorless cameras.
One of the things that sets Fuji apart from most other camera brands is that many of their cameras do not come with a PASM mode dial. (PASM stands for Program, Aperture priority, Shutter priority, and Manual.) Instead they’re equipped with the classic controls of vintage film cameras—physical shutter speed and ISO dials, and an aperture ring on most lenses.
Ironically, although that classic dial setup was a key reason for me to switch to Fuji, in practice I usually shoot in aperture priority, whereby I set the aperture ring manually but let the camera figure out the best shutter speed and ISO settings. Unlike my old Nikon DSLRs, which bury variable ISO in the menus, Fuji treats ISO as just another parameter that can be automated simply by setting the dial to “A”. A big reason why I just let the camera pick an ISO value in an acceptable range is that the Fuji sensors render ISO noise differently from other brands, with the result that it looks rather like film grain. That, combined with the built-in film simulation recipes (some of which add their own grain), makes high ISO noise almost a non-issue. Especially when shooting street scenes, I really don’t care what ISO I’m shooting at, because it all comes out looking fairly close to film, and zooming in reveals a pleasant grain structure that only enhances the street vibe.
And then, on a lark, I bought the Godox Lux Jr. flash.
Vintage vibe
It’s not an expensive device—I paid just $60 on sale, less than what I’ve paid for a 5-pack of Kodak Portra film—but I nevertheless felt the need to justify that purchase by promising myself that I would use it on my film cameras as well as on digital. Sure, I already have two professional speedlights and a more compact one, along with a wireless controller, but I wanted something where I wouln’t have to figure out the cryptic LCD and button functions each time I fired it up. I wanted something I could switch on, turn a dial, and shoot.
The Lux Jr. is just dripping with 1970s vibe, and not just in outward appearance. In terms of functionality it very much resembles an old-timey strobe. There is no LCD. There are no buttons. There is only an “on” switch and a power dial. That’s it. There’s an automatic mode that sets the flash power based on available light (it’s got a small light sensor in the front), but it’s barely mentioned in the instructions and it’s actually more difficult to use. This flash is made for vintage film cameras, and it also happen to work great on most digital cameras.
Even the flash output has a vintage look to it. The wide diffusion screen does a great job of eliminating a center “hot spot”; at the 35mm focal length I was using in my tests, the entire frame received more or less even light. That light, however, is very bright—not bright enough to clip highlights or wash out colors, but the indoor shots I took at night are really reminiscent of what flash photography looked like in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Of course this is a manual flash, so you can always adjust settings to your taste.
How it works
Operating the Lux Jr. couldn’t be simpler, but a basic understanding of the exposure triangle is helpful.
There are just two controls: a knob to turn it on, and a flash power dial. The dial is used to adjust the flash power from full down to 1/64 power. There is also a small switch on the side that allows the flash to act as an optical slave unit, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
Integrated into the dial is a handy calculator that can help you find the correct flash power and/or aperture based on your ISO and the distance to your subject—and by “calculator” I don’t mean anything electronic; it’s just a freely rotating plastic disc with scale markings. All you have to do is rotate that disc until your film or camera ISO is lined up with the distance to your subject (in the image above, I chose 800 ISO and a distance of 2 meters). Then on the other side of the disc you’ll find the correct flash power for each aperture setting. Lastly, you rotate the outer dial so the desired aperture is in the 12 o’clock position (in the image above, I set the flash power to 1/64 for an aperture of f/2).
In my testing, I found this calculator to be quite accurate. As long as you don’t exceed the maximum distance of 4 meters, the flash provides full and bright coverage, yet the images are never overexposed. It seems more consistent to me than TTL, and it’s a whole lot easier than having to mess with guide numbers.
M is for manual
Even though there’s an “A” setting on the Lux Jr. that might lead you to believe there’s some kind of TTL option here, there’s not. All that does is set the flash power based on available light (there’s a small sensor in the front), assuming you have your camera set to ISO 100 and f/2.8. For any other ISO or aperture settings you’ll have to do the math in your head. So yes, the automatic setting on this flash actually requires more thinking than manual. Trust me, just set it to “M”.
But whether you use the Lux Jr. in manual or automatic mode, your camera will always have to be in full manual exposure mode for it to work properly. Since there is no TTL, the camera doesn’t talk to the flash at all except by triggering it when you press the shutter. Once you’ve set the flash power dial based on your ISO and aperture settings, you don’t want your camera to change those settings when you press the shutter halfway down. And no, you don’t want it to automatically set the shutter speed, either. Since you’re most likely shooting in the dark, the shutter speed would be set really low and you’d get camera shake. And if you’re using it in daylight as a fill flash, you also don’t want the camera to select a shutter speed that exceeds your sync speed, or you’ll get weird banding in the image. (Most digital cameras have a sync speed of 1/250s or 1/200s, depending on how old the camera is; most mechanical film cameras have a sync speed of 1/60s. If your camera has a leaf shutter, congratulations! your sync speed is considerably higher.)
So when using the Lux Jr., be sure to set your ISO and aperture on the camera as indicated on the dial, and use a fixed shutter speed that’s high enough to avoid camera shake but not higher than your sync speed (shutter speed has no effect on foreground exposure in flash photography, but it does control how much of the background is visible). In most scenarios, that means 1/60s for film and anywhere between 1/60s and 1/250s for digital. And as a reminder, if you’re using the Lux Jr. with a digital camera, you’ll need to set your camera’s flash mode to “M” (manual).
Important note to users of Fuji X100 and other cameras with built-in flash
There was one thing that threw me for a loop with the Lux Jr., and that was getting it to work properly with my X100V, which has a built-in flash. Because the Lux Jr. does not communicate with the camera, the camera doesn’t know there’s anything sitting in the hot shoe. First of all, you have to go into the camera menu to activate the flash (in “M” mode) so that the hot shoe will trigger when you press the shutter. When you do, however, both the Lux Jr. and the built-in flash fire, which is not what you want. Fortunately, the Fuji has a menu option called “Built-In Flash”; you have to set that to “OFF” so that only the external flash fires. I don’t know if other brands have a similar feature, so please check your manual before investing in the Lux Jr.
I’m back to shooting in manual
Having to pay more attention to exposure settings when shooting with the Lux Jr. has done something special: it has rekindled my love for shooting in full manual mode. I admit that I’ve been a bit lazy in my digital photography, perhaps even a little sloppy. I’ve been relying too much on the (admittedly excellent) Fuji auto-exposure system, using only the exposure compensation dial to make corrections on the spot. I’m not saying that’s not a valid way to take photos—those camera features are all there for a reason—but it has kept me a little too far removed from the process, and has also resulted in some inconsistent exposures when shooting in a fixed location. Shooting in manual remedies that, and also makes it easier to expose for highlights—a common technique used in street as well as landscape photography.
When using the Godox Lux Jr. on my Fuji X100V or X-T5, I’m forced to shoot in manual mode; but even when I’m shooting without flash, I find myself more inclined to set ISO, shutter speed and aperture manually, which allows me to be more purposeful about exposure and also slows me down enough to really consider composition.
And on Fuji cameras, that’s as easy as turning a dial or ring.
