I’m going to start this with a quick recap for people who might be unsure of what a ring light/flash is or why they should care, those of you who came here for the review may skip straight to the “read the rest…” link at the bottom!

A ring light surrounds the lens and produces images with an intense glowing look and faint ‘halo’ like shadow around the subject. They have been very popular with fashion photographers for a while although opinions on their use tend to differ…

Until recently the only commercially available ring flashes were either the AC powered studio variety or the hotshoe mount macro ring lights. Neither of these are particularly well suited to shooting people on the go - the big lights require an even bigger battery or long extension chord and the macro version simply isn’t powerful enough. Now there is a third alternative in the form of adaptors that take an existing hotshoe flash and turn it into a ring flash through a series of special reflectors inside a ring shaped diffuser.

As an events photographer who strongly dislikes on camera direct flash this option is extremely attractive I preorded the Orbis as soon as shipping was announced. Read on to find out what it’s like to shoot with under real world conditions and more importantly what it does for your images!

The Orbis

There are two ring flash adaptors on the market, the Ray Flash and the Orbis. The main difference between the two is that the Ray Flash hangs down from a flash mounted on the camera’s hotshoe whilst the flash fits directly into the bottom of the Orbis, which must then be held in front of the lens.

A consequence of this is that the Ray Flash blocks the flash’s AF assist lamp. Seeing as I plan to use the setup in low light conditions this was the principal reason for choosing the Orbis. The Orbis is also cheaper, but at $170 it is still pricey, especially if you’re based in the UK.

When using the Orbis the flash has to be fired by an off-shoe cord or wireless trigger. An off-shoe cord makes a lot of sense (unless you happen to own a set of RadioPoppers) as you’re going to want to use the auto TTL mode of the flash if you have it as your subject distance is proably going to change a lot! Here is the Orbis with a Canon 430EX mounted:

But enough of this! I wanted to post a review based on actual shooting experiences rather than a dry lab test. The venue for this was to be the newly opened top floor of the Blue Fly Lounge, York. This is a very good example of the sort of situation where the ring flash is handy - the ceiling is low and the walls are painted a deep red which would cause problems if I tried to used bounced flash.

In this case I think the stark look of the ring light perfectly complements the bold decor. Even at a reasonable distance the trademark shadow reallys helps lift the subject from the surrounding and makes the image pop. Now for a quick comparison between direct flash (left) and ring flash (right):

Thanks Amy for letting me borrow you for a few minutes! Whilst it’s true the direct flash shot could have been improved if I’d zoomed the flash out (it was left on auto) I think this is still gives a good demonstration of the ring flash ‘look’. In fact a couple of minutes in photoshop produced this, which I don’t think is too bad for a 30 second shoot in a crowded bar!

Now onto the negatives, and first and foremost we have the handling. I didn’t think this was going to be too much of a problem, I usually use my left hand to support the lens, so I thought I’d just be able to hold the Orbis and flash in my left hand and rest the lens inside the ring. This is not as convenient as it sounds however, as supporting the front of the lens tends to tilt the camera back so you end up taking almost all the weight with your right hand. This might not be a problem for some but I found with the 30D plus battery grip and heavy lens it was very difficult to hold the weight and hit the star button.

Another problem is that unless you are holding the flash level the all important AF assist beam may be tilted off somewhere and not covering the central [or any] focus point. It’s something you have to constantly checking as it’s hard to see where the beam is pointing if the lens isn’t focussed in the first place. I missed some great opportunities whilst trying to focus this shot:

All of these things are by no means insurmountable, with practice I’m sure it’s possible to do a lot better but any distraction when shooting is unwelcome, and it clearly showed, looking at the composition of some of the images! Fashioning some sort of bracket to hold everything in place is going to be a priority.

I will also be investigating some method to fix the flash inside the Orbis such as this velcro mod. This is on account of a surreal situation in which I was powerless to intervene as I saw my precious flashgun slide out of Orbis toward the hard tiled floor, only to stop millimeters short and bounce back up into my hand. Thanks to the coiled off shoe cord no damage was done but inventing the new extreme sport of flashgun bungee jumping was not really what I was there for.

When the background is a long was behind your some of the effect is lost and you can end up with a flat looking photo (see above). You still have to pay attention to your surroundings to get the best results.

So in summary the Orbis is expensive, difficult to hold, difficult to use and is by no means a magic bullet. It is however, a lot of fun, will get people talking, as well as providing an very good alternative to straight flash, and for those reasons alone I love it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Behind the Scenes, Reviews/tests, Tutorials and guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.