The Lux Senior In The Field

Borrowed from Photo Stock.

Cue Sad Trombone: I was so looking forward to falling in love with the Lux Senior Flash. Unfortunately, the unit has some serious flaws that would make this a poor choice if you're looking for a versatile, working flash and not for some mid-century styled eye-candy. I bought it based on the design of the reflector, and was willing to forgive any shortcomings of the flash if the reflector did what I hoped it would do. Having worked with the flash manually, I can halfheartedly say the reflector does work, but just about everything else falls short

Charging: Since I was going to experiment with the flash in the manual mode, I did the guy thing and didn't read the directions. I understand fractions as well as the next person, so I went ahead and manually chose the output using the large, easy tor read output dial on the back of the flash. But first, I had to charge the internal battery. I managed to grab the USB charger and cable for my Fuji T4. I found that it took about an hour and a half to fully charge the flash as it came from the box. The flash Ready Light serves as a charge indicator. Plugging in a  USB charger turns the light red, and when fully charged, it turns green.

I decided to use a Fuji X100S as my test platform so I could have access to full flash synchronization at all shutter speeds. I also took advantage of auto-focus because I wanted to leave as little as possible to chance. I decided to first evaluate the light spread.

Light Fall Off: This became apparent when I first started playing with it. My "snaps" had a spotlight look, so just to be sure, I found a garage door to photograph. The Fuji has a 23mm lens, the full frame equivalent of a 35mm. As you can see, the light is concentrated in the center when mounted in the camera's hot shoe. I will say that the light falls off gently at the edges, which can be useful when you wish to highlight a subject near the center of the frame.

When I returned home, I mounted the flash on an APS camera with a 35mm lens, one that nearly duplicates the 50mm focal length considered "normal" for 35mm film. Low and behold, the narrower angle of the lens better matched the beam angle of the flash. I wonder if this was by design.

That's the earpiece of my classes to my right. 

This flash-on-camera selfie was made at arm's length, and you can easily see the light falloff below my nose. The highlight on my forehead is nice and even, and the shadows on my face are softer than I would have expected from a conventional flash. And as I mentioned, the falloff at the edges is very soft. The catchlights are prominent, but not especially large. If I were to make this shot again, I'd take the flash off-camera and aim it a little lower. Incidentally, the flash can function off-camera, which I'll discuss in my next post.

Photo Credit: Streetshooter.com

Inspiration: Photographer Zack Arias has become a well known Fuji photographer, and has done a number of videos for several Fuji camera roll-outs. He and David Hobby were early Fuji X100 adopters, and I'm sure that Fuji listened to what they had to say, as the cameras show definite improvements with each new iteration. When the Fuji X-T1 was introduced, Mr. Arias took it to Marrakech, where he produced a series of twilight photographs at a local bazaar. In this promotional video he can be seen using a one flash technique employing a Fuji camera, a Pocket Wizard, and a small speedlight.

Screen capture from YouTube video

This shot is typical of the shots he made with his simple, one flash approach. It also supports my belief that light placement is sometimes more important than light quality.

Takeaway: So far, the reflector missed my expectations due to it narrow beam angle, putting the Lux into the category of specialty light. My next post will cover things like output, off camera use, and the so-called "universal flash exposure automation". As I test the unit, I am reminded of a quote from Han Solo: "I got a bad feeling about this".