Alright, I’d been itching to get a ring flash for some time now, but until recently the expense was just too steep for my skinny wallet. My interest started a year ago when I really began examining lighting techniques and looking at what the industry was doing in general. The ring flash effect of eliminating indirect shadows is wonderful, and it’s application outside the fashion industry could be very cool. The clincher was during a recent Muse Project when a fellow photographer had loaned me his Alien Bees ring flash to use. Though the unit was very heavy, I really liked the effect.
What my options came down to were the Ray Flash which at the time ran for about $300, and the studio strobe type of ring flash which averaged about twice that amount. Then came the Orbis™ Ring Flash. More affordable than the Ray Flash (who smartly dropped their price to $200 on January 1st to keep the competition stiff), the Orbis differs by not mounting the unit on the flash while attached to the camera. According to their FAQ this eliminates the possibility of breaking your camera’s hot shoe mount, which is designed to break off under stress to prevent damage to other, more expensive parts of the camera. However, this does force the photographer to have the means to triggering the flash by either tethering it to retain E-TTL/i-TTL functionality or by triggering it wirelessly in manual mode. This is a small problem that is easily solved by all but the amateur photographer. Luckily, I have an off-camera shoe cord so I could let my camera talk to my flash. So, on with the test!
Attaching the Orbis Ring Flash to my 580EX was a bit tricky at first. The Orbis has a clip inside that has arms that are intended to keep your flash from moving around, and these were difficult to move out of the way to insert my flash unit. With a little practice, I think this task may be much easier in the future. Please note that the Orbis is not meant to actually support your flash, and if you grasp it instead of the flash, you will wind up with your flash crashing to the floor.
Holding the flash in my left hand with the Orbis mounted atop it was cumbersome but not too heavy; I was able to shoot for about 20 minutes without my arm getting tired. Well, my right arm holding the camera was rather fatigued after that, but the one with the flash in it was doing pretty good. In fact, I wound up using the Orbis to support the end of my lens. I was a little concerned with the placement of the flash relative to the camera’s line of sight, since I couldn’t really pay attention to that, but if there were any issues there they were so minor as to be undetectible.
Overall, it is a great addition to my arsenal of tools for the price tag. I would like to have a bracket to attach the flash/Orbis to the camera, which would allow me to use my left hand for zooming and other necessary tasks. It would also be cool to have a ring that attaches like a filter to the lens to help stabilize the front of the lens inside the Orbis. Orbis promised a bracket to be available the first part of this year, but so far it has been a no-show. I may just wind up making my own – we’ll see how that goes.
Anyway, here are the results. My kids were my guinea pigs as usual. They decided to ham it up a bit…
See the rest of this set on Flickr.
Tags: Alien Bees, Muse Project, Orbis, Rayflash, ring flash
