On Sep 10, 2012, at 3:47 PM, Bruce Walker wrote: > Larry, take it from me: if you are buying a macro ring flash hoping to > do anything other than shooting small objects well lit close up, you > are wasting your money and time.
Two things that I seem to be exceptional at. > > On your musician idea: if you are shooting them any further than a > couple of feet away, by the point that the light reaches them you'll > hardly be able to tell the difference between light from a macro ring > flash and a regular hammerhead flash, except that the ring flash has a > puny light output in comparison. The main advantage is that it stays pointing exactly where the lens is pointing. > Just put various light modifiers, > lenses, grids, etc. on a AF360 or AF540 (or Vivitar) and you'll get a > light almost indistinguishable from a macro ring flash at that > distance. > > The macro ring flashes have no way to narrow the beam spread like > their bigger brothers do either. The spread is probably 120 degrees or > so. good to know. > > Ring flashes for studio work (portrait, fashion) are much larger in > diameter and often have beauty-dish-like features so they are more > focussed. Also good to know. Thanks. > > > On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 5:33 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: >> It's beginning to look like any inexpensive new ring flash I find is going >> to have enough shortcomings that it won't have the flexibility for me to use >> it for some of the things I'd want to use it for. As such, I'm going to put >> getting a ring flash on the back burner in hopes that I find a good used one >> sometime at a price that I'll be able to afford when it is available. >> >> One of the things that I'd like to try with one is gridding it to use it as >> a narrow spot when photographing musicians. For composition reasons, it'd >> be nice if it weren't dead center, but even if it means throwing away some >> resolution, it would put the nominally most important subject in the >> sharpest part of the lens, and half, or three quarters of the time, the one >> third point you choose to aim the flash at would be wrong anyways. >> >> I've tried gridding my AF 540, but it's always a challenge to get it to aim >> where I want it, with parallax and everything. >> -- >> Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. > > > > -- > -bmw > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
