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- Edward Bray
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On Thursday evening I received my Lencarta Safari 600 powerpack and ringflash kit along with an additional Safari 600 powerpack head.
On opening the kit I was very impressed with the quality of the case, the supplied powerpack, faster battery charge adapter (you can also charge the battery in the powerpack although it is slower), mains adapter/charger and the ringflash itself. Yes the ringflash body is made of plastic, but can you imagine how heavy it would all be if made of metal? And, it is big. 19cms diameter with a 10cm diameter aperture for your lens to fit through. Also supplied was a radio trigger and a normal sync lead. I was disappointed to find that there was no instructions included other than how to put the ringflash components together to make the framework, although Garry Edwards did advise me that they were available to download from the website.
The picture below shows the ringflash head fitted to my 30D with the 100mm Macro and hood attached. I works and feels very good in this mode.
This is the models eye view of the ringflash unit.
I was pleased to discover yesterday that at ISO 50 and with the ringflash on its minimum power setting I could get 1:1 macro with my EF100 lens @ f32. As I did not have any means of making the flash power any lower I cut a piece of paper to fit the ringflash and was delighted to find it gave me a drop of almost 2 full stops as well as a more diffused light, I also cut a piece of paper to cover falf the head and this allowed me to introduce some limited modelling. I have now placed an order for a number of various scrims and ** gels from Lee to make some modifiers to vary the light output even more, this I feel will make the ringflash even more versatile.
Macro shots taken yesterday posted here!
I decided to try the ringflash out this afternoon in what is laughingly called our garden, with the ambient light being broken cloud and sunny patches, I wanted to use the ringlight on full power to try to keep the backgrounds unobtrusive (my garden is not the prettiest I'm afraid).
These images were taken from about 10ft away ISO 100 @ f22 1/160sec with my 50mm f1.4 on the 5DMk2 this was to ensure the ambient light was subdued or better! Pressed ganged the grandchildren into helping (well actually I had to promise them a toy each if they did well).
Now you have to remember that these images were taken in relatively bright light at between 1pm and 1.30pm this afternoon, but look like they were taken in the late evening. This opens up some creative opportunities not usually possible with a portable on camera flash unit. the quality of the flash light itself seems very consistent and the powerpack head seems to recharge the capacitors very quickly. I had no trouble taking images that were consistently well exposed from the same place, this leads me to believe there is little variance in the flash power during use.
On opening the kit I was very impressed with the quality of the case, the supplied powerpack, faster battery charge adapter (you can also charge the battery in the powerpack although it is slower), mains adapter/charger and the ringflash itself. Yes the ringflash body is made of plastic, but can you imagine how heavy it would all be if made of metal? And, it is big. 19cms diameter with a 10cm diameter aperture for your lens to fit through. Also supplied was a radio trigger and a normal sync lead. I was disappointed to find that there was no instructions included other than how to put the ringflash components together to make the framework, although Garry Edwards did advise me that they were available to download from the website.
The picture below shows the ringflash head fitted to my 30D with the 100mm Macro and hood attached. I works and feels very good in this mode.
This is the models eye view of the ringflash unit.
I was pleased to discover yesterday that at ISO 50 and with the ringflash on its minimum power setting I could get 1:1 macro with my EF100 lens @ f32. As I did not have any means of making the flash power any lower I cut a piece of paper to fit the ringflash and was delighted to find it gave me a drop of almost 2 full stops as well as a more diffused light, I also cut a piece of paper to cover falf the head and this allowed me to introduce some limited modelling. I have now placed an order for a number of various scrims and ** gels from Lee to make some modifiers to vary the light output even more, this I feel will make the ringflash even more versatile.
Macro shots taken yesterday posted here!
I decided to try the ringflash out this afternoon in what is laughingly called our garden, with the ambient light being broken cloud and sunny patches, I wanted to use the ringlight on full power to try to keep the backgrounds unobtrusive (my garden is not the prettiest I'm afraid).
These images were taken from about 10ft away ISO 100 @ f22 1/160sec with my 50mm f1.4 on the 5DMk2 this was to ensure the ambient light was subdued or better! Pressed ganged the grandchildren into helping (well actually I had to promise them a toy each if they did well).
Now you have to remember that these images were taken in relatively bright light at between 1pm and 1.30pm this afternoon, but look like they were taken in the late evening. This opens up some creative opportunities not usually possible with a portable on camera flash unit. the quality of the flash light itself seems very consistent and the powerpack head seems to recharge the capacitors very quickly. I had no trouble taking images that were consistently well exposed from the same place, this leads me to believe there is little variance in the flash power during use.