ring flash

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Chris Reed

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Chris Reed
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i want a ring flash for portraits, i want to make the girl look like a porcelain doll, but the only things on the bay are the small macro ones, i want to avoid buying new/ full price as i'm cheap, so will the cheap macro ones work for what i want? will the ring flash converters work well, if paired with and 800 flashgun? all this needs to fit nikon, and preferably a hot shoe mount. help a brother out.
 
Have you read the review on strobist.com chris? He's reviewed a couple of them and seems to be using them quite a bit lately. Only used a home made one myself which wasn't a great success, sorry I can't be more help.
 
The macro ones are too underpowered for decent portraiture, you could go for a Ray-Flash, I had a look at one last week and it looks like an awful lot of money for a wee bit of plastic and this kind of backs up my feeling that it's just not worth the money.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
The macro ones are too underpowered for decent portraiture, you could go for a Ray-Flash, I had a look at one last week and it looks like an awful lot of money for a wee bit of plastic and this kind of backs up my feeling that it's just not worth the money.
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Ha - that's the same one I saw used to good effect by Mark himself

Oh well

DD
 
I'll be having a go at this one....

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Kev M said:
Have you read the review on strobist.com chris? He's reviewed a couple of them and seems to be using them quite a bit lately. Only used a home made one myself which wasn't a great success, sorry I can't be more help.
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Strobist isn't quite as unbiased as it perhaps once was, so it's worth viewing any of DH's "discoveries" with a healthy dose of skepticism....
 
Flash In The Pan said:
Strobist isn't quite as unbiased as it perhaps once was, so it's worth viewing any of DH's "discoveries" with a healthy dose of skepticism....
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I don't think it ever was, it's just more obvious now.

To get back to the question, the macro ones are pretty useless for anything except the job they're designed to do, e.g. macro. The reason for this is partly lack of power but mainly lack of size.

You can get some cleverly designed add ons to hotshoe flashes and they do work - but only until they drop to bits.

Lencarta produced a reasonably priced pro model but unfortunately that's no longer available. I has been replaced by an even better one but it's a pro tool and so isn't cheap, and anyway I've heard that there's a waiting list for them.

Other manufacturers like Profoto, Elinchrom and Bowens all supply good ones too, but they cost even more.

See Using a ringflash on my site, and also click to see the video
 
Garry Edwards said:
I don't think it ever was, it's just more obvious now.
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I didn't say it was unbiased, rather that it was less so now.

Obviously DH has to make a living, but now that he's no longer got a "proper" job it has, as you say, become more obvious and unfortunately a lot of the stuff he is touting is over-priced junk.....
 
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