Godox V1 Camera Flash Review with Round Head

Today we are going to take a look at a new and slight­ly unusu­al exter­nal flash with a round head from the man­u­fac­tur­er Godox.

A little about the manufacturer

Godox spe­cial­izes in the pro­duc­tion of var­i­ous pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment, main­ly flash­es and lights, and has already won the lead among pho­tog­ra­phers due to its excel­lent prod­uct qual­i­ty and rea­son­able prices. The man­u­fac­tur­er has its own web­site where you can view all prod­ucts and read their char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Package

Comes with:
• on-cam­era flash;
• lithi­um-ion bat­tery;
• Charg­er;
• charg­ing cable (Type‑C);
• mini-rack;
• case;
• man­u­al.

Detailed instruc­tions in Eng­lish and Chi­nese. You can down­load it elec­tron­i­cal­ly here.

Pho­to instruc­tions

The case is of good qual­i­ty, has a loop for attach­ing to the belt.

Specifications:

• Fea­tures include full sup­port for TTL auto modes, man­u­al mode, HSS 1/8000s high-speed sync mode, FEC pow­er com­pen­sa­tion, and first/second cur­tain sync.

• Addi­tion­al­ly, you can buy a set of acces­sories and fil­ters for the flash under the sym­bol AK-R1.

• It is worth not­ing that the acces­sories are mag­net­i­cal­ly attached (installed around the perime­ter of the head), so when using a flat dif­fuser / reflec­tor and pho­tograph­ing in por­trait ori­en­ta­tion, it can sim­ply be rotat­ed (scrolled) to the desired posi­tion, which is usu­al­ly not pos­si­ble with oth­er flash­es.

• The man­u­fac­tur­er also released an adapter that allows you to mount these acces­sories on flash­es with a rec­tan­gu­lar head.

• The body of the flash is made of plas­tic, the assem­bly is excel­lent. The only draw­back is that due to the round head and slip­pery plas­tic, it can roll off an inclined sur­face, so you need to be care­ful when using it.

Comparison with Sigma EF 610 DG Super flash:

• The flash head is equipped with an LED lamp that can shine with a pleas­ant warm light (3300K) and has 10 bright­ness lev­els. The lamp is not super bright, but it is quite enough to illu­mi­nate an object at a dis­tance of 1.5–2 meters and clos­er in the dark. The lamp can also be turned on while the flash is on.

Light­ing exam­ple (ALL PHOTO EXAMPLES IN THE REVIEW USING FLASH WITHOUT PROCESSING):

Minimum / maximum brightness:

• The advan­tages of the bat­tery com­part­ment include the absence of any cov­er that can fall off / get lost.

• On the left is a but­ton to remove the bat­tery and two ports under the USB Type‑C plug for updat­ing the firmware (the lat­est firmware can be down­loaded here) and a 2.5mm port for syn­chro­niza­tion.

• Among the advan­tages of the design, I also note that in any posi­tion, the top can be turned back (in the ini­tial posi­tion, the flash turns back, cre­at­ing an angle of 120 °), that is, you do not need to turn 180 ° hor­i­zon­tal­ly to point the top at the ceil­ing.

• The flash mounts to the camera/stand with a snap shoe.

• The flash is equipped with a dot-matrix LCD that has good vis­i­bil­i­ty and back­light. The back­light lights up when you press any but­ton and is on for 12 sec­onds by default (you can either turn it off com­plete­ly or turn it on so that it does not go out).

• The flash con­trol unit is con­ve­nient and thought­ful. In the mid­dle is a wheel that can not only be rotat­ed, but also pressed.

• The flash has three main flash modes: E‑TTL, man­u­al and strobe mode.

• The flash has 9 pow­er modes and each mode has 10 pow­er steps (1/10 stop). Pow­er con­trol is con­ve­nient, you can change in 1/10 steps (by scrolling the wheel) or imme­di­ate­ly switch between whole stops (by press­ing the wheel). The max­i­mum pow­er is 1/1, the min­i­mum is 1/256.

• If you take a pic­ture in TTL mode and then switch to man­u­al mode, the pow­er set­tings will be saved.

• The flash uses the same radio syn­chro­niza­tion sys­tem (Godox 1.4GX) as oth­er Godox flash­es. By the way, this is one of the best (if not the best) radio syn­chro­niza­tion sys­tem on the mar­ket, which is dis­tin­guished by sta­ble oper­a­tion, com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with all brands (most uni­ver­sal), the abil­i­ty to com­bine on-cam­era and stu­dio flash­es, and so on.

• It is worth not­ing the con­ve­nient con­trol of oth­er flash­es in the mas­ter mode: each but­ton is respon­si­ble for a sep­a­rate flash, the pow­er of each flash is adjust­ed by scrolling or press­ing the wheel (to change by 1/10 step or a whole stop, respec­tive­ly).

• In the radio syn­chro­niza­tion mode, I was pleased with the func­tion of search­ing for the most reli­able chan­nel, which will be espe­cial­ly use­ful if oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers are shoot­ing near­by. The man­u­fac­tur­er also per­fect­ly opti­mized bat­tery con­sump­tion in stand­by mode — it is min­i­mal and does not melt before our eyes.

• In slave flash mode, it can be in stand­by mode for 60 or 30 min­utes, after which it will go into sleep mode (press­ing any but­ton again will put it on alert).

Photo menus:

• The round shape of the head accord­ing­ly pro­vides a round spot of light. Com­pared to a flash with a con­ven­tion­al rec­tan­gu­lar head, the light of this flash has a smoother tran­si­tion, bet­ter dis­per­sion, fills the frame and cre­ates soft­er shad­ows.

All 6 pho­tos were tak­en with the fol­low­ing set­tings: f5, ISO 400, shut­ter speed 1/100, 50mm lens.

Flash Godox, man­u­al mode, 1/64 (fore­head)	Flash Sig­ma, man­u­al mode, 1/64 (fore­head)	Flash Sig­ma, man­u­al mode, 1/128 (fore­head)
Flash Godox, man­u­al mode, 1/2 (to the ceil­ing)	Flash Sig­ma, man­u­al mode, 1/2 (to the ceil­ing)	Flash Sig­ma, man­u­al mode, 1/4 (to the ceil­ing)

Exam­ples without/with flash:

autonomy

• The flash is pow­ered by a 2600 mAh bat­tery, which is enough for about 480 flash fir­ings at max­i­mum pow­er. I also note that the bat­tery pro­vides fast flash recy­cle at max­i­mum pow­er (1.5 sec­onds).

• As soon as the flash has recharged and is ready to use, a beep sounds (if nec­es­sary, it can be turned off).

• Some say that this flash is prone to over­heat­ing when oper­at­ing at max­i­mum pow­er, which increas­es the recy­cle time to 3–4 sec­onds, but in prac­tice I did not notice this (I specif­i­cal­ly did about 50 puffs at max­i­mum bright­ness — it took 1.5 to recharge ‑2 sec­onds). Per­haps this prob­lem was on the first firmware, but I test­ed on the lat­est (V1.3).

• In stand­by mode, the LED flash­es to indi­cate the bat­tery charge: 3 flash­es — high, 2 — medi­um, 1 — low, if it con­stant­ly blinks — the bat­tery is crit­i­cal­ly low.

• The man­u­fac­tur­er claims it takes three and a half hours to charge, but it took me exact­ly three hours to charge a ful­ly deplet­ed bat­tery.

Results

• The man­u­fac­tur­er Godox has released an excel­lent flash with great and well-designed func­tion­al­i­ty, as well as sta­ble per­for­mance (espe­cial­ly as a mas­ter or slave flash). I can safe­ly rec­om­mend it to those who are engaged in pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phy and for whom sta­bil­i­ty and con­ve­nience in work are impor­tant.

+ mag­net­ic attach­ment of acces­sories and the abil­i­ty to use the dif­fuser in por­trait ori­en­ta­tion;
+ con­ve­nient con­trol with the abil­i­ty to quick­ly change set­tings;
+ thought­ful and con­ve­nient design (bat­tery slot; hot shoe latch; head tilts back with­out the need to turn the top 180 degrees);
+ sta­ble and con­ve­nient oper­a­tion (con­trol of oth­er flash­es) in mas­ter / slave mode;
+ fast reload;
+ even dis­tri­b­u­tion of light and soft shad­ows due to the round head;
+ low bat­tery con­sump­tion in stand­by mode;
+ great func­tion­al­i­ty (full sup­port for TTL auto modes, man­u­al mode, HSS 1/8000s high-speed sync mode, FEC pow­er com­pen­sa­tion func­tion, first/second cur­tain sync, etc.).

— the round shape of the head and smooth plas­tic (not soft-touch) make it slip­pery.

Bonus

You can buy the flash here:

• AliEx­press