The $139 Flash That Replaced My Two-Light Setup
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Setting up for a photoshoot can be grueling. My usual two-light setup for portraits means lightstands, probably a c-stand or two, sandbags, the lights themselves, modifiers — and by the time I've packed it, hauled it, and unpacked it on set, I've done a workout before I've taken a single frame.
That's fine when I'm stationary. It's a real problem when I'm not. I like to move around on a shoot, and a full kit turns "move around" into "make three trips to the car."
I had a portrait session coming up that was going to require hiking gear up a trail. Somewhere in the planning I hit the obvious realization: my usual kit wasn't coming with me. Not practically, anyway.
The unit itself — battle-worn, still runs like new.
To the drawing board
I love a good rabbit hole, and this one had me deep for a while. New gear built for this exact problem exists, but it gets expensive fast — and "expensive" wasn't really the point. I wanted to know if I could solve this with something simpler.
What I kept circling back to was the Sunpak 120J. One flash. Bare bulb capable. Old enough that it's basically indestructible, and cheap enough on the used market that if it didn't work out, I wasn't out much.
My honest doubt going in: my usual kit is a pair of Paul C. Buff Alien Bees — a B400, B800, and a B1600 — which between them can handle almost any lighting situation I run into. Replacing that with one light, and a decades-old one at that, felt like it shouldn't work.
What I actually bought
I found one on eBay — purchased 7/25/26 for $139.54. The listing included the flash itself, a TR-PAK IIa battery pack, and an extra bulb. I haven't touched the TR-PAK IIa yet; for this particular use case I wanted the lightest setup possible, so I went a different direction on power (more on that below).
Pull the reflector, and this is what you get.
A little bit of history
I wanted to know more about what I was actually holding, so I went down the rabbit hole on that too.
The Sunpak 120J traces back to a company with a longer history than the flash itself — Sunpak's first product shipped in 1963, though the company wasn't formally incorporated until 1972. For most of the 1970s and '80s, Sunpak was one of the more popular names in third-party auto-thyristor flashes, distributed in the US under Berkey Marketing Companies out of Woodside, New York. Berkey went bankrupt in 1988, and the Sunpak brand picked up a new US distributor afterward: ToCAD America, still the brand's distributor today, out of Rockaway, New Jersey.
That handoff matters for dating my specific unit, because the packaging and manual on mine are both branded ToCAD — which means this one was built 1988 or later, not during the earlier Berkey era.
From there I found an actual paper trail. Digging through the Wayback Machine, I pulled up ToCAD's own site as far back as it goes — a snapshot from December 30, 1996, sitting at "Rev 1.0 7-9-1996" on the page itself. Click through to the product page and the 120J is right there, sold in two flavors: the 120J TTL (dedicated flash metering for 35mm and medium format bodies) and the 120J Auto/AutoPro — mine — described as functionally identical minus the TTL dedication. That description didn't change on ToCAD's site for years; I found the same product page, word for word, still live in an October 2002 capture.
I even found a full 1997 ToCAD price sheet with the exact SKUs:
120J AutoPro Flash Only — $489.95
120J AutoPro Flash Kit w/ TR-PAK IIa — $569.95
120J TTL Flash Only (requires module) — $544.95
120J TTL Flash Kit w/ TR-PAK IIa — $649.95
Replacement flash tube — $39.95
So the exact kit I bought for $139.54 — flash, battery pack, spare bulb — sold new for roughly $570 in 1997 dollars. That's over $1,100 today. I don't have a confirmed release year for it — Sunpak/ToCAD never published one anywhere I could find, and I'm not going to guess at one just to fill a blank — but I can say with real confidence it was in full-price production under ToCAD from at least 1996 through 2002, and the same product page survived at the same URL until sometime before it finally 404'd, based on a 2023 capture. Whatever else it is, it's not a flash that got phased out quietly after a season or two.
- Guide Number 45/150 (m/ft) at ISO 100
- Power Settings Full, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 — manual only, no auto-thyristor metering on this variant
- Reflector Removable parabolic reflector — normal or wide-angle position, or pulled entirely for true bare-bulb output
- Movements Tilt and swivel head
- Power Options TR-PAK IIa NiCd pack (200 full-power flashes per charge, 1.5-second recycle), 4×AA batteries, or AC adapter
- Off-Camera Use EXT-10 dedicated remote cord compatible
- Original MSRP (1997) $569.95 — flash kit with TR-PAK IIa, per ToCAD's own 1997 price sheet
- Manufacturer Sunpak, distributed by ToCAD America (Rockaway, NJ)
No LCD, no menus — just a dial and math.
Getting it running
For power, I didn't want to carry the TR-PAK IIa — it's the higher-capacity option, but it's also more to haul. I opted for a straight 4-AA setup instead: a Panasonic K-KJ17KHCA4A charger paired with four eneloop pro high-capacity Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. Simple, light, and it's held up.
For the stand, I'm running a Nissin LS-50C-L II — a super light stand, carbon fiber, narrow-leg construction, swivel top pole. Built for stability without the weight of a standard stand, which was the whole point of this exercise.
The part I was scared of
There was a stretch where I wouldn't shoot bare bulb. It felt like giving up control. The Sunpak is exactly where that fear stops making sense — I've only run it with the reflector still mounted, which tames the spill and gives it some direction, but even like that it does things a fresnel-head speedlight just doesn't.
Sunpak Auto 120J Professional — the badge that started this whole rabbit hole.
Where it's actually been tested
Since picking it up, I've run this flash on two portrait sessions and one corporate headshot session, in genuinely different light — full sun and it doesn't blink, dial it back at sunset and it's just as controllable. It hasn't been the wrong tool yet.
Track, XC, wherever the story actually happens — not just a backdrop and a bench. See what's included and how sessions like Asher's come together.
See What's Included ↗The real test was a senior session with Curtis High School's Asher Pepin. We shot track photos at the high school, then moved to Chambers Bay for several more locations — a lot of walking, a lot of repositioning, no time to babysit a heavy kit between setups.
That's where the one-light setup actually proved itself. It wasn't built for this kind of shoot. It handled it anyway.
Full sun, direct backlight — no reflector, no fill card, just the 120J.
- Asher Pepin's Senior Session
- The Sunpak 120J
- The Nissin Light Stand — coming soon
- RadioPoppers: Remotes & Triggers — coming soon
- The Complete Setup, and Why — coming soon
