Godox has a new pocket-sized flash. The iM10 weighs about 23 grams, measures 40 × 40 × 30 mm and slides onto any camera with a standard single-contact hot shoe. Godox names compact digital cameras, mirrorless bodies and film cameras as the cameras it is made for.
It went on sale this week. Imaging Resource reports a price of $24.90 at B&H.
What’s new
The iM10 is a deliberately simple flash. There is no screen and no menu, just two buttons: one for power and a test flash, one to step through the output levels. It has four settings, full, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 power, and a small LED shows which one you are on.
- Built-in battery: a 3.7 V, 125 mAh lithium cell, rated for about 350 flashes at full power.
- Recycling: about three seconds at full power.
- Charging: USB-C, with a full charge taking about an hour and 10 minutes. Godox suggests topping it up from a charger or power bank between shoots.
- Working range: rated from -10 °C to 49 °C.
What it leaves out matters too. Imaging Resource notes that the iM10 has no TTL metering and no high-speed sync, so you choose the power yourself. Godox doesn’t publish a guide number on its product page. ProVideo Coalition counts it alongside the iM20, iM22 and iM30 in Godox’s family of small flashes.
Price and availability
The iM10 is listed at $24.90 in the US through B&H, according to Imaging Resource, and ProVideo Coalition gives the same figure as the suggested retail price. A charging cable is in the box. Godox’s own page lists no price, and we found no confirmed pricing for Europe or the UK yet.
What it means for film-look photographers
If you shoot the direct-flash look at receptions, the bright, slightly harsh party frames that couples know from disposables and old point-and-shoots, this is the kind of flash that makes a second, smaller camera easy to carry all day. At 23 grams it adds next to nothing to a Fujifilm X100-style body or a 35mm compact.
Because the trigger is a simple single contact, it should also fire on many older film cameras with a hot shoe, which is where a lot of us want this look in the first place. And since this is real light rather than a preset, you get the real thing: true specular highlights, dark falloff behind your subjects and red-eye if you are not careful.
The trade-offs are real, though. With only four manual steps and no TTL, you will be working by distance and aperture, so expect some trial and error at the reception. On cameras with a focal-plane shutter you are also limited to the camera’s normal flash sync speed. And since Godox gives no guide number, test it at the distances you actually shoot before you count on it as your main reception light. About 350 full-power pops per charge should cover a party if you charge it between the ceremony and the dancing.
For $25, it’s an easy thing to keep in a jacket pocket for those last, loose hours of a wedding night.
Sources
Header image: Godox (press image)
