It's Here! The Lux Senior Flash

It's Finally Arrived: My Flashpoint FlashBack Senior (Adorama) a.k.a. the Godox Lux Senior (everywhere else) on-camera flash is set to arrive on Thursday, so I plan on playing with it most of Friday. I'm so excited. I'm about to lose control and I just can't hide it.

While waiting, I spent a good deal of time looking for anyone who has actually handled the flash, either production or prototype, in the hopes of clarifying some of the statements made about its performance. As is the custom of on-line stores, there is a comments section, which at this point is mostly Q & A session by potential buyers. I'll get to those in a moment.

Behold! A lot of writers like to do "unboxing videos" of their latest purchases. I can't find any real value in that, but I rather like box itself. I will say that the Godox Art Department went to great lengths to provide some very eye-appealing packaging. The turquois color of the box elicits a fifties vibe, and I can appreciate that, having lived through it. Inside, you'll find the flash carefully packed in a dense foam, cut to cradle the flash perfectly. 

Works On Any Camera: This is a great selling point, but needs some qualification. Physical joining of the flash to the camera can be accomplished using an accessory shoe (shown here on a vintage Nikon F), the camera's built-in shoe, or an accessory flash bracket.

• Built-in accessory shoes can be found on the earliest film cameras, and were used to attach supplementary viewfinders that matched to view angle of the lens. They were usually placed directly above the lens. 

• 

  Photo Credit: MyNikon.org.

  When single lens reflex cameras replaced the rangefinder as the dominant camera design, the need to mount an accessory viewfinder was eliminated, since the SLR viewfinder allowed the photographer to see exactly how the camera was framing the image. Accessory shoes were available as an add-on accessory, as seen in the classic Nikon F, where it can be seen on top of the film re-wind crank. If you opted to mount the flash in this accessory shoe, you would need a short cable to connect the flash to your camera's built in connector, which was almost always a P/C connector, named for Prontor/Compur, two shutter manufactures who adopted this pin connector interface as their standard. The Lux flash comes with a short flash cable with a P/C connector for the camera and a microphone connector for the flash.
• As electronic flashes became small enough to safely mount on the camera, the "hot" accessory shoe was added the the camera. Initially, they were simply an "on/off" switch that fired the flash. Later on, when TTL flash metering was developed, more contacts were added so the flash and the camera could communicate. However, no matter who the manufacturer, the center contact will always trigger any flash you install, minus the exposure automation. The Lux has "hot foot" (my term) allow it to work in conjunction with any camera's hot shoe center contact. Just a remainder, there are no electrical contacts for TTL  functioning, but you already knew that.
  

I have some very high expectations for the flash. At best, it will provide the kind of light I used to get with my much bulkier Armator conversions. At worse, it is an interesting manual flash with lots of potential. 

More to follow after I've spent some time with it in the field.