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Macro Ringflash.

chunky
Posted 29/02/2012 - 18:55 Link
I've just been browsing thru flea-bay looking at macro ring flashes and LED lights.
There seems to be a plethora of cheap specimens from China which would appear to be
very poor quality.
I have never ever done macro work before so after buying either the Sigma ,Pentax or Tamron
macro lens I was wondering if any one out there has had any previous experience with these cheapo
lights. Good , bad or indifferent.

I don't want to spend fortunes initially, but if I like the genre of macro work then I think
some serious kit would be bought.
Chunky
Edited by chunky: 29/02/2012 - 18:56
Charlotte
Posted 29/02/2012 - 20:06 Link
I have a cheap ring light that I bought off of ebay when I first started with macro and they work well with my 50mm macro lenses (well they were easier to manage than a pringles tube over the on board flash anyway). They don't flash they are a constant light and I can't comment on whether they will work as well on the longer distance macro lenses.

Once I added teleconverters or tubes to the macro lenses the cheap ring lights didn't give enough light and a forum member very kindly pointed me in the direction of a DOI ring flash, which, I suppose isn't as adjustable as the modern ring flashes, but as I got it off of ebay for about £50.00 I'm not complaining and it's easy to make diffusers to dim the light if necessary.

Kind regards
Charlotte
beakynet
Posted 01/03/2012 - 16:00 Link
I use one of thoes cheap LED ring light and it works well on my Pentax 100mm Macro.

You can also get adapters for standard flash units, more expensive than the LED lights but cheaper than a dedicated ring flash. May be worth looking at.

So far, much of the macro work I have done did not really need much extra light and I also found that the built in flash on my K7 can work with the 100mm lens as the working distance is a little more.
Bodies: K5IIs, K7, MZ5n, LX, MV
Lenses: DA*16-50, DA18-55WR, DA18-135, DAL35, M50 F2, A50 f1.4, FA50 f1.4, DA*50-135, DA55-300, Tamron 70-300, DFA 100 WR Macro, M135 f3.5, Sigma 120-400 APO DG HSM, Tokina 500 f8.0
Flash: Metz 58, Metz 48
Accessories: BG4, Pentax right angle finder, Pentax mirror adaptor lens, O-ME53 Viewfinder Loupe
Auto 110 System: Auto 110, Winder, 18mm, 24mm, 50mm, 70mm, 20-40mm, AF100P, 1.7x telecon

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