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!
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