Back in April, Westcott introduced the new S18 Mini Flash – a new speedlite seemingly perfect for the recently revitalized compact camera market.  Chinese camera accessory manufacturers have been producing similar products for a few years now, but they all look like toys – cheap junk.  But when a trusted US based company like Westcott enters the chat, my attention is grabbed.  According to Westcott President Brandon Heiss, “The S18 is designed to remove every barrier that keeps photographers from trying flash for the first time. The price, the size, the simplicity — all of it is intentional. We wanted to create something that delivers real results from the very first shot,” – Source:  Petapixel.

I own and often use the Westcott FJ80 II professional level speedlite – previously reviewed here on ThruMyLens.  It’s a fantastic product, but it’s also not small.  It would look ridiculous on something like my Fujifilm X100VI.  Neither is it ideal when I want to travel with minimal gear.  So the size and weight (3.5 ounces and measuring 2.4 x 2.1 x 0.9 inches) of the Westcott S18 Mini Flash definitely appeal to me for use with my X100VI.  Yes the camera does have a built-in LED flash – with all the inherent limitations associated with a built-in flash, not the least of which is the inability to adjust the output of flash.  So the asking price of $40 seemed like a low risk proposition, even if the S18 turned out to be more than a novelty than a useful tool.  Spoiler warning:  It didn’t disappoint.

As I’d hoped, the S 18 has a minimalistic design which pairs well with the vintage aesthetic of the X100VI:

Included with the Westcott S18 Mini Flash is a small pouch and some gel strips that you slide over the lens of the S18:

I get it – you can’t expect much for forty bucks.  But I would’ve liked to have seen a more robust case for the S18 as I intend to use it mostly for travel.  The other nit that I’ll pick is, for a product that’s intended for beginners the accompanying documentation was pretty minimal.   Westcott does the absolute best instructional videos in the industry so I expect that at some point they’ll release videos that will help beginners use this flash.  But as of this writing, there isn’t anything out yet.

I’m not really a gel guy in my photography, but one of the strips in the gel pack appeared to be more of a diffusion strip to help spread and soften the flash.  The kids out there these days seem to really go for the harsh vintage flash photography look, but I prefer a softer more diffuse result so I keep this strip on the S18:

The head also articulates opening the possibility of bouncing the flash off of a ceiling or wall to also help spread and soften the flash.

Looking at the back of the S18 we find the beautifully simple user interface:

The S18 is rechargeable via USB-C (good for about 500 flashes, and has a 2.5hr. recharge time).  Holding the power button down as expected turns the unit on and off.  Once powered on, a quick press of the power button will do a test flash.  In most respects the S18 is a simple manual mini flash.  It’s not sophisticated enough to communicate with the camera’s metering and auto focus system to automatically adjust the output based on ambient lighting conditions.  The S18 has a 19-step manual power adjustment system (+/- buttons), so output can be adjusted across an appropriately 7-stop range.  Nice.  It wasn’t until I was photographing the S18 that I noticed the red optical sensor on the back of the unit:

Sure enough, the S18 can be used off camera as an optical slave.  This feature opens up some real creative opportunities.  So I was anxious to test the S18.

TEST PHOTOS

Finding a model available when I need them as always a challenge so for this exercise, I used my lovely and talented Rottweiler, Athena.  I put her in front of the windows in the formal living room – Here’s a shot with the X100VI showing what the image would look like without using a flash:

Classic back lit photo with Athena almost completely underexposed and in shadow.  Detail this badly in shadow typically is not recoverable so no amount of editing in Lightroom/Photoshop is likely to yield a usable image unfortunately.

Again the X100VI does have a built-in LED flash.  I turned on the built-in flash for this next photo:

Not a bad result – but the built-in flash sort of takes a brute force approach and blasts the scene with uncontrolled light.

Now here’s a photo taken with the Westcott S18 Mini Flash.  With a manual flash, you may have to take a trial and error approach until you get a pleasing result.  After a couple of tries, I got this image which has a much more subtle and natural quality than the above image taken with the built-in flash:

Keep in mind these images are straight out of the camera with no editing applied.  With a little touch up work in Lightroom, this could be a fantastic shot and a casual observer wouldn’t even know that a flash had been used.

Now here’s where things get exciting.  The S18 has a C1 and a C2 mode.  In C1 mode, the optical sensor on the S18 will be triggered by a standard flash.  If your camera has a pre-flash/camera setting (which the X100VI does) use C2 mode on the S18.  The camera will send a fast light pulse from its flash right before the shutter opens for a perfectly timed flash from the slave unit – the S18 in this case.  I set up the S18 on a tripod camera right, and placed it in C2 mode.  Here’s the result:

Wow!  Beautiful!  Again, this is straight out of camera with no editing, but I did crop out the tripod.  Here’s the uncropped version so you can see the set up:

Because the pre-flash pulse correctly triggered the flash a fraction of a second before the exposure, you can actually see the illuminated head on the S18.  Here’s the final result after 5 minutes in Lightroom:

Needless to say the Westcott S18 Mini Flash has exceeded my expectations.  It excels in its primary function as a beginner friendly gateway into the fascinating world of flash photography.  But it also functions beautifully as a small, convenient replacement for the built-in flash units incorporated into many compact cameras.  I speak from experience when I say every Fujifilm X100VI owner need the Westcott S18 Mini Flash.