Ray Flash

Yes I am really getting a post out this week. I actually started this last week but have been obviously putting it off with other issues. Anyhow, a few weeks ago I ordered a RayFlash with a weekend discount from Scott Kelby's blog. At first you wonder why the darn thing costs what it does and then quickly realize the R&D, testing, and mounting this devices has is very specialized warrants the cost.

I took it into my brother-in-law's the day after I received it and we were playing around with it. The whole idea of a ring flash is to eliminate shadows from the flash unit. Here are a couple images of us playing with the RayFlash.

The wooden kitty (AKA salt shaker) had some ambient light coming from a window to the left and that is what is casting the shadow form the eyes. They were both shot at 1/60th at f/7.1 at ISO 400 using a 50 mm lens. The first image I was holding the flash sansRayFlash to the left and it cast a harsh shadow as expected.

The second image here I mounted the RayFlash on the 580EXII flash unit on the camera and shot away. You can still see the shadow being cast from the window, but the RayFlash fills in the rest nicely.

Our wives were there and really didn't feel like modeling for us so we had to pursue other options. Ring flash is always something that would be wonderful in macro photography but the problem is the size of the unites and dragging power to the flash head. Using the same camera setting as the salt shaker above, I leaned over the edge of a couch to get in close to this flower that was against a sliding glass door. There was a table outside with a blue plaid print on it. Using a couple of sliders in Lightroom I was able to remove the distraction all together.

I have an Alien Bees ABR800 ring flash that I use in the studio that works wonderfully. Again the problem is portability. With the RayFlash, the quantity of light may not be there but the quality certainly is. As long as that limitation is realized it will be a valuable tool in my kit.

Thats it for today folks. Cya... Doug