Godox TT685s

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A lot of the photos I take at home make use of flash units, but OEM flash guns – reliable as they are and also always guaranteeing full compatibility with their camera system – can be dreadfully expensive. For example, Olympus carries the FL-900R and FL-600R external flash units – and they cost a princely USD579 and USD299 respectively. Ouch.

I’ve had mixed luck with aftermarket flash guns over the years for the m4/3 system: a Tumax DPT386 AFZ – which didn’t correctly receive TTL signals and thus getting the correct amount of illumination was a terrific crap shoot – a Metz 50 AF-1 – which worked well until the battery lever broke – and most recently, a Nissin i40 and a Meike MK320. Both of the latter are still working great for my m4/3 bodies, though the Nissin i40’s command dial has faded from wear and tear to an illegible mess, and the MK320 is perpetually misreporting its current battery life LOL.

After a good deal of the usual finding-out, I stumbled upon a relatively new flash accessory player on the scene: Godox, a Chinese manufacturer. This company in the very short span of a few years have been prolific! They’ve put out a very wide range of flash units and supplementing accessories for both enthusiast and professional use, at very low prices, and – shocker – not at the expense of quality either.

So. The first flash unit I picked up for the new Sony A73 – a Godox’s TT685s for a very low USD96. Normally, a flash unit of this specification power – the TT685s is rated GN60 – will easily cost at least a few times more if you’re buying the OEM units. The flash is compliant to Sony’s , and also has a built-in 2.4GHz wireless remote system.

Comments and pictures!

The unit comes with the usual soft case, a stand, printed documents, all in a compact box.
The TT685s has the usual built-in wide angle panel and small white card reflector. The unit accepts four AA batteries lined up uniformly – unusual. The flash head can be tilted 90 degrees, and swiveled the full 360 degrees – nice! The head rotation is quite stiff though – hopefully it’ll loosen over time. There is also a micro USB port on the other side for firmware upgrades, and I was able to use the company’s own Windows application to upgrade firmware without hitches.
The TT685s is mounted on the flash hotshoe by a twist knob. I disliked these locking mechanisms, and far prefer the lever-types used on the Nikon flash units. Even the Nissin i40’s push-to-lock works better than this.
The majority of the unit’s back is dominated by a large dot-matrix LCD screen with green backlighting, as seen in the picture here. The push buttons offer plenty of feedback, and the rotating dial is sufficiently recessed to resist accidental rotations. There is also a dedicated power-on switch on the lower right corner too. The flash gun is highly configurable, but for those of us who can’t be bothered with advanced controls, turning it on and setting it to (auto) TTL works well.
The TT685s atop the Sony A73. Damn thing is huge! This is by far the largest external hotshoe mounted flash unit I’ve used. I might get a smaller Godox flash gun at some point for travel.

I’ve also got into the habit of leaving the TT685s permanently on – as the unit automatically goes to sleep after about 90 seconds. The flash unit revives quickly from sleep when the A73’s shutter release is half-depressed.

And a couple of bounced flash shots of the kids. The flash was set to TTL and bounced upwards. Probably because the room was also reasonably lit, wasn’t fired at full-power – which made it possible for the TT685s to keep up the repeated releases (about one shot per second, about half a dozen at a time).

This is why we keep having to replace all our broken clothes hangers. 1/60s, f3.2, ISO400, and using the Sony FE 50mm f1.8 lens.
Guinea pigs are much more attentive listeners than humans are. 1/60s, f5, ISO1600, and using the Sony FE 50mm f1.8 lens.

The real icing on the cake would had been for the Godox external flash units to also support in-unit charging, like on the Meike MK320 – that would have saved me having to bring along a AA battery charger on vacation too! But in-unit charging is by far an exception than the norm for external flash units.

And finally with the Godox XPro wireless flash trigger that just arrived. The trigger is a lot of advanced features that I’d probably never touch or use: but the price difference between this and its lesser cousin – the Godox X1T – was pretty minimal, so why not. After a quick pairing between the XPro and the TT685s, the combo syncs and my wrist is super grateful now for not needing to hoist a heavy flash unit atop a camera every time I take a picture. Oddly though, the setup seems to regularly under-expose by at least a stop or so – at least when I shoot wide-open. Nothing that flash exposure compensation can’t handle of course, but still something odd and to be further observed.

The XPro has a huge LCD display and a lot of push buttons.