Clint
Mu-43 Hall of Famer
The AD200 lives up to the marketing, except for being pocketable unless you have cargo pants or the like - or unless you like large lumps in your pants. I’m impressed by how well it seems to be made. It does feel heavy being a one piece unit as the weight is not spread over separate parts. Being a single piece without cords, syncs or external battery is extremely nice!
Power – Using two different light meters, ISO 200 and at full power at 10’ I was getting consistent f/20-22 readings and at 4’ f/42-45. The difference I was getting between the Fresnel head and bare bulb with a standard reflector was about a ½ - 2/3 stop less. The standard reflector is still throwing a wider pattern than the Fresnel lens.
I used it for a portrait shot today and even at 1/128 it was too powerful for a small room setup. I understand there is an update in the works that allow 1/256 power. This would be welcome on my part.
Color accuracy – it does slightly change over the course of power settings, yet nothing extreme. Outside of my initial testing, for my portrait shot today I had to adjust the Kelvin settings in Lightroom to 6100 to get pleasing skin tones, but that may not be the AD200 fault. I has some ambient light as well as a modifier I have yet to definitively check. For the price I’d call this unit excellent even if the WB was what I had in these shots.
With the Fresnel head all of my small Speedlight accessories fit. With the bare bulb all my Quantum modifiers fit. So this is a win win. However there still seems to be no low cost grids for the barebulb setup. I though Godox had offered a set of grids for their standard reflector – but cannot find any for sale.
Mounting – I have not had the issues other have, I simply use a sturdy umbrella adapter with a stud screwed into the AD200 body. Where the mounting points are is a little too far back for a good balance at the mounting point. The build quality seems substantial enough to handle this offset balance. I even tried the AD200 in my Westcott Apollo boxes and the bare bulb works great.
The TT350O
A small efficient flash and works well for a two AA batteries. It is about ½" shorter than the Olympus FL-600R and a little skinner. This flash feels good in the hand and very nice construction
When I first got it I could not get the Zoom function to work. Had to open and close the wide panel diffuser a few times. With the dial you can adjust the zoom or set it to auto to work with the camera.
TTL works well, consistent, and so does HHS synch up to about 1/2000 at 4’. Further distances or faster shutter speeds and the flash really seems lacks the power.
The exposure compensation does not make the power setting changes indicated by the amount indicated by the FEC settings – it is far less than expected. A +3 setting seemed to be closer to +1.
For bounce flash, the TT350 is challenged.
When the batteries are fully charged the recycling was really pretty good – about 2 seconds at full power but will quickly increase as battery power is lost.
To set up and use the flash as a Master or remote flash is not near as simple as others. Actually a little challenging. I did not have time to fully test the TT350 as a master with the AD200 due to learning the required settings. I quickly tried the TT350 transmitter with the AD200 HSS synch and initially it seems good – but that was a very short initial look. I’d really suggest waiting for the new transmitter vice trying to use the TT350 as the master.
Edit Note: I changed the X1T to TT350 in the sentence - I quickly tried the TT350 with HSS. Added: With the X1T it will only synch up to 1/400 at the current time.
Overall, one is getting what they pay for and in a seemingly quality unit.
Power – Using two different light meters, ISO 200 and at full power at 10’ I was getting consistent f/20-22 readings and at 4’ f/42-45. The difference I was getting between the Fresnel head and bare bulb with a standard reflector was about a ½ - 2/3 stop less. The standard reflector is still throwing a wider pattern than the Fresnel lens.
I used it for a portrait shot today and even at 1/128 it was too powerful for a small room setup. I understand there is an update in the works that allow 1/256 power. This would be welcome on my part.
Color accuracy – it does slightly change over the course of power settings, yet nothing extreme. Outside of my initial testing, for my portrait shot today I had to adjust the Kelvin settings in Lightroom to 6100 to get pleasing skin tones, but that may not be the AD200 fault. I has some ambient light as well as a modifier I have yet to definitively check. For the price I’d call this unit excellent even if the WB was what I had in these shots.
With the Fresnel head all of my small Speedlight accessories fit. With the bare bulb all my Quantum modifiers fit. So this is a win win. However there still seems to be no low cost grids for the barebulb setup. I though Godox had offered a set of grids for their standard reflector – but cannot find any for sale.
Mounting – I have not had the issues other have, I simply use a sturdy umbrella adapter with a stud screwed into the AD200 body. Where the mounting points are is a little too far back for a good balance at the mounting point. The build quality seems substantial enough to handle this offset balance. I even tried the AD200 in my Westcott Apollo boxes and the bare bulb works great.
The TT350O
A small efficient flash and works well for a two AA batteries. It is about ½" shorter than the Olympus FL-600R and a little skinner. This flash feels good in the hand and very nice construction
When I first got it I could not get the Zoom function to work. Had to open and close the wide panel diffuser a few times. With the dial you can adjust the zoom or set it to auto to work with the camera.
TTL works well, consistent, and so does HHS synch up to about 1/2000 at 4’. Further distances or faster shutter speeds and the flash really seems lacks the power.
The exposure compensation does not make the power setting changes indicated by the amount indicated by the FEC settings – it is far less than expected. A +3 setting seemed to be closer to +1.
For bounce flash, the TT350 is challenged.
When the batteries are fully charged the recycling was really pretty good – about 2 seconds at full power but will quickly increase as battery power is lost.
To set up and use the flash as a Master or remote flash is not near as simple as others. Actually a little challenging. I did not have time to fully test the TT350 as a master with the AD200 due to learning the required settings. I quickly tried the TT350 transmitter with the AD200 HSS synch and initially it seems good – but that was a very short initial look. I’d really suggest waiting for the new transmitter vice trying to use the TT350 as the master.
Edit Note: I changed the X1T to TT350 in the sentence - I quickly tried the TT350 with HSS. Added: With the X1T it will only synch up to 1/400 at the current time.
Overall, one is getting what they pay for and in a seemingly quality unit.
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