Ray Flash Review | |
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We clicked with:
Excellent even light for macros
Beautiful modeling light for portraits
Easy upgrade for some flash systems
Shots in the dark:
Exposure calculation more complex
Light fall-off
Not suitable for all subjects or camera systems
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The ringflash was originally invented for medical photography. Its shadowless light makes it ideally suited to creating warts 'n' all images of, er, warts. We'll come back to that later. It was quickly adopted by macrophotographers, because having a flash that surrounds the lens makes it almost perfect for close-up work. Then in the 1970s, some bright spark thought of using it on people and the soft, even light has been in and out of popularity ever since.
Traditionally, ringflash units fall into two camps; expensive, specialist and dedicated to a camera, or really expensive, specialist and too heavy to use outside the studio. The common words - 'expensive' and 'specialist' - meant that until recently the ringflash was the preserve of the professional. The Ray Flash puts paid to that elitism; it's an adaptor that fits in front of your flashgun and uses a series of internal plastic prisms that redistribute the light output from your flash to a ring around your lens. The unit just slips on the front of your flash and a little plastic lever clamps it in place - no need to modify your flash, and you only sacrifice a stop of power in the process.
Ringflash creates a unique image, especially on people. Unlike many lighting systems, ringflash produce great photos when the subject is close to the background, because the flash casts an even, soft, halo-like shadow behind the subject or subjects. The light hitting the subject itself is shadowless, yet strong and often gives a washed-out, slightly overexposed look to skintones. And then there's the distinctive white-ring catchlight in the eye. You have seen this before - think punk band photos, or Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album cover. It's not a particularly flattering light (it's the antithesis of the sort of well-modelled light of 1930s portrait photographers, for example) but if the subject has the looks and the personality to carry it off, it will look fantastic.
Here's three examples, showing the difference between the types of flash. The 'subject' - a lifesize model of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean garb, in front of a smoked glass window - has the advantage of being static and having the broad modeling shape of people. Of course, the catchlights in the eye are fake and the skintone is not designed for close investigation. However, notice the hard shadows and gritty looking chin of the direct flash, the deep-set shadows around the eye sockets in the bounced flash example and how the Ray Flash helps smooth the whole portrait out:
The Ray Flash is every bit the ringflash. That means it works beautifully in all the places where a ringflash works well and comes to grief in all the places where ringflash stumbles. Ringflash work wonders on skinny, fresh-faced youth; the slight overexposure endemic to the concept helps smooth out the lumps and bumps of teenage hormones, while the halo effect draws attention to the slim lines of the body. Use the same technique with caution on older, chunkier people - the ringflash can make those laugh lines seem like thick canyons of shadow and the halo outline just seems to make fat people fatter. It's a hugely useful tool in the arsenal of any portrait photographer though. It's also useful for macro photographers, too:
You will need to experiment with your flash system to get the best from it. The Ray Flash obscures the flash sensor, which can cause overexposure issues with old auto-flash mode, while it also appears to underexpose when used in fill flash mode. Using a Nikon SB800 on an old-but-trusty D70, TTL-BL (Nikonese for fill flash) required +1.3 or +1.7 compensation in places where +0.3 was usually sufficient. However, TTL mode behaved in the same way irrespective the Ray Flash was in place. The best - and slowest - way of dealing with this is to use an external flash meter and using the flash in full manual mode.
Fall-off is a problem with any ringflash system and this is no exception. If you want the background to be illuminated by the Ray Flash, your subjects need to be very close to that background; less than a metre between subject and is not uncommon, and by about two metres between the two and the background begins to darken fast. Still, as with all these 'criticisms', they are endemic to the ringflash, not the Ray Flash. And any of these criticisms are soon swept away by the quality of the pictures produced by the flash itself. There's nothing like it at anything like the price.
Unfortunately, the Ray Flash is only available for the Nikon SB800, with adaptors expected for Canon flash soon, but there are no plans to produce versions for rival cameras. If you think it through, it's almost impossible to make a universal adaptor, because the size of the flash front and the distance from that to centre of the lens can differ from system to system. However, if you are handy with gaffer's tape and a heat gun, and prepared to waive a warranty or two, you could probably lash up something that works with any particular combination of flash and camera.
It's worth the effort though. The Ray Flash is one of the most useful accessories you can buy today if you take pictures of people… if you try it, you'll buy it. I did!
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