Panasonic GH5 with Godox tt350o flash

rjensen11 wrote:

Do you think the lack of focus assist with the X1T-O is a Godox issue or an Olympus issue?

Both?

Godox/Yongnuo/other cheap Chinese flash gear tends to be initially reverse-engineered off Canon, and then adapted for other platforms. If the adapted platform doesn't work the way Canon does, there can be issues or they can just drop the feature for that platform.

For example, the TT685 -C/-N/-S versions can be "smart" optical slave/master units. But the TT685-O can't do RC master/slave.

Given that the FL600R's AF assist is an LED on the front of the flash, while the Canon AF assist is a light grid below the front red panel along with the sensors, I'm gathering that the AF assist communication is different enough to exclude just using the Canon reverse engineering.

There's also the fact that the FL600R's AF assist doesn't work on older micro four-thirds bodies, indicating Olympus or Panasonic may have changed the hotshoe protocol midstream. And whether or not those changes were included in any documentation they have of the hotshoe "standard" that a 3rd party could use to develop from is in question. Even with the Canon Godox gear, the AF assist works great—unless you have a 5DMkIV. So it appears Canon silently changed the hotshoe protocol again. In other words, Godox may be trying to hit a moving target, with no information on where/how/when it moved.

While Godox could develop AF assist function for four-thirds, the more variants they stick in for the different flavors, the more engineering/maintenance they have to do. Given that Canon users are still the biggest percentage of their market, and that MFT users probably come in number four on the list, it may not be enough to justify the cost involved in getting AF-assist to work on all systems.