Dear Reader,

thank you for your support. Whether you support the site by watching my videos, subscribing, leaving comments, or giving me some of your money, you are appreciated. Honestly, mindfully, gratefully appreciated. And if you happen to be one of the wonderful people who came by this website and dropped a few bucks in the kitty so that I could buy a set of the new Godox macro flash units, then you rock!

The Godox MF-12 macro flash on the included mounting ring

At the end of the summer, when I heard about the impending release of this new flash device, I knew two things for certain. I knew I couldn’t afford to buy any of these flashes and I knew that Godox wouldn’t be sending me any to try out. I wonder how many of these units were sent out to influencers with massive audiences but no interest whatsoever in macro photography. A bunch, I suspect. I am equally confident that Godox had done the math and calculated the relative benefit of sending dozens, more likely hundreds of flashes to famous landscape and sports and street photographers, in the hopes that just one of them would say something about it. This math is the reason most of us no-name content creators don’t get asked to look at the stuff you really want to know about. If we want to review a high value product, we need to buy it. And if we can’t buy it, well, you will just find someone who did review it. It is a perverse system that is bad for passionate creators, inquisitive viewers, and ultimately for the platform itself.

This will be a bit of a spoiler, so if you want see what I thought about these lights before reading on, watch the video first - it is a little further down the page.

Where was I?

Before I launch into the product and what I found, I want to thank Pergear, the awesome camera equipment company that asked me to review these wonderful flashes. I have written to Godox and asked to review some of their products, but my letters have all gone unanswered, so I was not expecting to hear for the Godox mothership. But being asked to do the review by Pergear was a big deal! They are a very big company and a key player in the camera equipment market and I am honored by this invitation to review such an important piece of gear. Thank you Pergear!

As a studio macro photographer, a new subcompact macro flash holds so much potential that I just had to find a way to review this product. It is hard enough staying relevant in this unhealthy, hypercompetative zero-sum game of YouTube survival. I saw this product as the change that would open the door to all the incredible photographers whose reluctance to embrace flash is holding them back from producing, possibly, their best work. A simple, cheap, lightweight flash with more versatility than anything affordable on the market? Yes, these Godox lights are a potential “game-changer”.

So I went to my audience and I asked for your help. If I said that 24 hours later, when the donations already covered the cost of all the flashes, I felt humbled, that would be almost as big an understatement as saying “These new Godox macro flashes are pretty good”. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for each and every one of you, and these new MF-12s are the BOMB!

The Godox MF-12 flashes are the perfect tool for most kinds of macro photography. They are not speedlights, not at all. They are individual parts of a larger lighting system. An incredibly flexible, powerful, exhilarating system. When the units arrived after a long delay, I had a few moment of angst when I realized these flashes do not have a replaceable battery. and they are tiny - barely 5 ounces each. They were very simple indeed. I have a notoriously difficult time figuring out new flashes, especially the big brand ones. The Nikon R1C1 is the perfect example. That lovely system costs $1,000 for two little flashes and the lens ring. It is beautifully made and built like a tank, but it is not intuitive to use. These flashes are.

They have manual mode and a TTL mode. Which makes them purely manual flashes (I do not like using TTL - if I am going to take a bad picture, I want it to be on me, not on my flash). Anyway, TTL just doesn’t work with 99% of the lenses I use. You turn them on, assign them to a group. There is a menu button - first page - to turn on the wifi triggering, then you select each group (I put each of my flashes in its own group so I could control each of them independently) and set the power. And start taking pictures. And keep taking pictures. And eventually go to bed and then get up and start taking pictures again.

1473

is how many pictures I took with all four of my MF-12s before one of them turned itself off. I had been shooting bees in the studio and had stacked more than a dozen respectable stacks and had one light set to 1/8 power, one to 1/16, and two at 1/32. After each stack I rotated the flashes to give them all the same amount of power demand. That is more frames than I shoot in any focus stacking session, but not by a lot, and these are new batteries. How will they hold up? we shall see.

The flashes do not show any significant wandering of intensity or color, they do not over heat at 6 second interval shooting. They do not drop shots, they eventually just turn off. They are so small and light it is hard to believe how much light you are controlling out in the field. I am sure they will be brought low by a noonday sun, they have a guide number of 16, for crying out loud, but I never once doubted that when I pushed the shutter these little gems would light up.

But as awesome as they are in the field, they really come into their own in the studio. They will stay in position if mounted on a long Quad Hands Bendy arm - just one. My DIFFUSION panels won’t stay in place with one bendy arm!

Suddenly we have a new kind of macro lighting. We have a level of control we could only dream about before now. There is no practical limit to how many of these flashes you could use in a lighting setup - they don’t take up any room. So when I want more light on my subject but I don’t want to just add specular highlights, now I can - just by adding another low power flash on the same side. The ability to array low power flashes is revolutionary. Even if you could afford 6 speedlights, you just can’t pack them that close without them turning into one big fast studio strobe. With these you can.

They are easy to diffuse, easy to flag, slow to run down, and fast to charge They recycle as advertised. Was there anything I didn’t like? The clip things - I don’t have a good feeling about how long they are going to survive daily use. They are by no means flimsy, but they are plastic, have moving parts, and the cracking noise when you adjust the tilt angle sends shivers up my spine. And that is it. I love these lights, they are close to perfect, and I don’t say that very often.

Coming up is my Amazon link to the flashes, I am also including the Pergear links. The Amazon link is a paid affiliate link, which means I may make a small amount from qualified purchases. Don’t forget the trigger and get four lights, you will want six, but you need four at least. Buy them and get ready to discover a new way to take close up and macro photographs!

You can follow these links to go directly to the Pergear stores in the US - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CG868LK?ref=myi_title_dp

in Europe, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09CG868LK?ref=myi_title_dp, or

in China, https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09CG868LK?ref=myi_title_dp

I strongly urge you to check out the Pergear stores - they have a tremendous selection and some very competitive prices - Be sure to pay them a visit!