Chuck Darwin
I like Fujifilm products and therefore waited a long time before this review so that I could try the flash under a wide variety of circumstances. Unfortunately, I like the flash less and less. The positive: It uses common alkaline batteries, is compact, nicely made, and in appearance is a good fit to my X-E2 camera. The negative: Very slow to power up to the first shot, and, with fresh batteries, the charge time between shots is a minimum of 5 seconds and is usually much longer. The result is an extremely slow camera rig with a huge number of missed or marginal photos. The good of this, I suppose, is that it reimposes the discipline of taking time to compose a shot. You have no other choice. The price of the flash seems reasonable given its construction quality. Considering its utility, the flash is way overpriced. The flash is definitely more powerful than the in-camera flash, but it still has trouble filling a room and it lacks a bounce option. Given the EF-X20s limited features and slow performance, I often end up using the in-camera flash. Finally, as noted by other reviewers, the power on indicator is almost impossible to see when using the flash outdoors. This would not be a major issue if the flash was reliably ready soon after each shot, but such is not the way the flash operates. An outdoor session using fill flash requires patience, prayer, and keeping your eyes glued to the EVF, waiting for the flash-ready symbol to appear.