Godox is a name you’ll normally see on a flashgun or a studio light, not a camera — but the lighting giant has just made its first-ever camera, and it’s a properly intriguing oddity. The Godox C100 is a “transparent viewfinder camera”: a tiny, screenless 65g compact you compose through a see-through panel rather than a rear LCD, and, at around £22, it costs less than most people spend on lunch. Full details are on the official Godox C100 product page.
The concept is the draw. In place of a conventional screen, the C100 has a large transparent display (Godox rates its light transmittance at over 50%) that you look straight through to frame your shot, with an unobtrusive HUD overlaying live exposure data, framing guides and battery status directly on the glass. There’s no rear screen at all, so to see what you’ve captured you either offload over USB or pop out the microSD card. It shoots both stills and video in four aspect ratios — 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 and 1:1 — with frame lines that shift live on the panel as you switch between them.
The feature that lifts it above the growing crowd of cheap novelty cameras, and the one most likely to interest our more analogue-minded readers, is that it doubles as a handheld light meter. Using centre-weighted metering on the central 25% of the frame, you set your ISO (100–3200) and the C100 suggests the optimal aperture and shutter speed — genuinely handy for feeding exposure settings to a meterless vintage film body. Godox even pictures it being used alongside a classic Bronica. At this price, it undercuts a dedicated light meter comfortably.
A dose of realism is in order, mind. Godox hasn’t published any sensor or resolution details, and everything points to modest, toy-camera image quality rather than anything you’d frame on a wall. That semi-transparent panel also gets harder to read in bright sunlight, and this is a device “focused on fun” rather than a serious imaging tool. But as a pocketable curiosity that moonlights as a cheap light meter, it’s one of the more charming things we’ve seen from the screenless-camera trend — and we’d happily give one a go.
Godox C100: Specifications
Type: transparent viewfinder camera (Godox’s first camera); stills and video. Display: transparent panel, over 50% light transmittance, 60.8 × 47.8mm, with live exposure/framing/battery HUD. Aspect ratios: 16:9, 4:3, 3:2, 1:1 with dynamic frame guides. Light meter: centre-weighted metering of the central 25% of frame; manual ISO 100–3200; suggests aperture and shutter speed. Storage: built-in microSD (TF) slot, up to 128GB. Data transfer: USB 2.0. Charging: 5V/1A. Battery life: over 1.5 hours continuous shooting. Dimensions: 104 × 71.7 × 19.1mm. Weight: 65g. (Sensor and resolution not published by Godox.)
Godox C100: Price and availability
The Godox C100 launched first in China priced at ¥199 (roughly $29 / £22 / AU$42), and is beginning to appear with international retailers including B&H and Godox’s US store. UK pricing and availability are still to be confirmed — we’ll update this story once they’re announced.
