Geek Corner: A Neewer Firmware Notice For About Three People.

Geek Corner: A Neewer Firmware Notice For About Three People.

Those three people, other than me, will have:

• A GFX 100S.
  • GFX100 also according to the firmware notes.
  • Other Fujifilm cameras are also impacted.

Week 1 WIth The GFX System: What I Have Learned So Far.

• A Neewer Q4.
  • Lovely things. Novel form factor and the power of an AD400 for the price of an AD200. Less if you catch a discount code on their website. I traded my mixed bag of AD200s and an AD300 to fund the move.

New Strobe, Who Is This?: Neewer Q4.

• A Z2 flash as trigger, Q Pro trigger, or other trigger I imagine.

The issue:

With the Fujifilm bodies, you can remotely trigger another Neewer Z flash using TTL, but the Q4 will not fire.

I say TTL specifically because maddeningly, they will fire when you press the test fire button. So they are connected. But TTL will not work. But a Z flash set right next to it will fire without issue.

What?

My first guess as to a solution was a firmware update.

Neewer firmware update is pretty standard stuff in theory.

• Download a Neewer desktop app.
• Download the specific firmware for your device from the same link above, and unzip it.
• Press mode and power or menu and power for older devices to initiate connection mode on the device.
• Plug it in, choose the device and file you downloaded, and click upgrade.
• Watch the status until it is done.

That is when I ran headlong into…

Issue 2:

Neewer Windows app did not see Neewer devices when they were connected via USB.

Same behavior no matter what flash, strobe, or trigger I connected.

Whee!

Unfortunately, the Neewer documentation was of no help.

A Google search netted me no solutions.

AI was even worse, offering broadly generic catch-all guesses.

YouTube tried, but the one fix video I found while encouraging… did not fix anything.

Then I finally noticed that in the device configuration USB listing the device itself said update driver…

So I right-clicked and did as I was told… And it connected.

Then I went ham updating everything.

Thought of doing each and testing the Q4 to confirm what firmware fixed it, if it would indeed fix it, but that quickly lost out to a full-on “Update everything!” fit.

And then it worked just fine with both Fujifilm cameras.

My guess?

It was a trigger side issue.

Why?

The Neewer Q Pro F firmware note called out the GFX 100 specifically, which I also assume fixed the other Fujifilm camera I tested.

Could have been the Q4 side also, I suppose. I will never know… But I do not care.

Becuse everything works now.

The advice for those three other folks with a Fujifilm camera trying to trigger a Q4 and having issues?

1. Right click the USB listing in the Windows Device manager, each time you plug a device in, and update the driver.
2. Update the firmware.

An issue specific to Fujifilm. Flash as trigger and actual trigger worked fine with the Q4 with Sony.

After all of that faffing about, do I have any regrets?

Nope.

Still a great system at a great price.

Welp. That is a wrap for this one.

Happy capturing.

-ELW