Outside the Ring—Watch Out for Novelties

The ring flash has been around for sometime and true to it’s nature, it comes and goes like most fads, especially when used in the traditional sense—you can spot an image taken with a ring flash in a heartbeat. Some call it cliché when you have a model close to a seamless background and a distinct, medium to hard shadow outlines her entire form. Its popularity in fashion photography is cyclical, however, in glamour photography it’s not as common until now with the recent advances in ring flash technology. With these advances comes marketing hype and uniformed, impulse buying decisions, so beware of the wannabes that are very limited in use and more of a novelty item than a ring flash due to creative marketing. Always research something before you purchase it and make informed decisions, not impulse decisions.

Novelty ring flash units being introduced today are usually built from plastic and can’t deliver a 1,000 “real” watt-second rating of power or even more power—beware of “effective” watt-second claims, this is a mere marketing ploy. These type of units will have you believing you can get an aperture of F/11 or better outdoors, what they fail to stress is you’ll have to place your subject usually 8-feet or less from the unit to achieve these results. Your models will hate you for this punishment as they walk away seeing “white-donuts” from the flash unit. These units also claim 1/10th accuracy for adjusting the flash output, what they don’t tell you is the “accuracy” is based on your feel and touch—there are no verifiable clicks, audio, LED displays, etc., to prove your accuracy, and a tenth of an F/stop needs some type of verification, no human hand can be that accurate with a sliding bar these novelty units incorporate.

With most ring flash units the camera is physically attached to the ring flash with a bracket that insures the lens is strategically centered in the flash unit’s hollow ring formed by the inside of the circular-shaped flash-tube. While the quality of light the ring flash produces can easily be utilized like a dead-on beauty light, it can also cause red-eye in your subject’s pupils. This redeye appears because the lens of the camera is now at an equal angle to the subject’s eyes as the flash unit itself, thus the incidence of light from the flash will reflect off the blood vessels in the rear portion of the eye, the retina. (Note: Rule of “The angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflectance” applies here.)

Though redeye is easily fixed in Adobe Photoshop®, it’s easier to naturally reduce or totally eliminate it by simply increasing the ambient light in the room, which causes the pupils in the subject’s eyes to get smaller. I’ll take a Hensel Integra Pro Plus monolight head with a 7-inch reflector and place it next to my ring flash with only the modeling-light turned on at full power and the flash portion of the monolight’s head turned off—the idea is not to use the monolight flash portion, but to only add illumination of the modeling lamp to cause the subject’s pupils to naturally reduce in size without causing a squinting of the eyes. When the ring flash fires, it will overpower the monolight’s shadows and the warmer color produced by the tungsten modeling lamp.

This technique, modeling lamp to contract the pupil to reduce redeye also causes more natural color of the eyes to appear and be photographed verses the large and dark pupil center, thus a more distinct set of eyes in color and shape. This is really evident in blue, green, silver and hazel colored eyes. You can use this technique even with beauty dishes, soft boxes and other light modifiers when working in darkened rooms or photography studios.

Another method to avoid red-eye and the much harsher light produced by such a specular source of light from a small ring is to change the standard clear glass that protects the ring flash with a frosted glass. The more professional ring flash units provide this option, but if your ring flash doesn’t, no sweat, just place a piece of Rosco, Tuff-Spun silk diffuser in front of the unit—make sure and cut a hole in the center so your lens can have an unobstructed path to the subject if you’re going to shoot through the ring.

Some photographers like myself will shoot with a ring flash in a nontraditional manner by not mounting the camera in the ring, thus utilizing the ring flash like a powerful off-camera flash. I’m careful when I use this off-center style of shooting, especially with solid and close backgrounds and no light modifier in front of the ring flash tube. This method will cause a rather large shadow to appear on the opposite side of the subject in relation to your shooting angle. If you stand left of the ring flash, this unflattering shadow is created to the right of the subject and when you stand to the right, the shadow shifts to the left. That is why this outside the ring technique is better for the great outdoors or darker backgrounds while keeping your subject as far away from the background as reasonably possible. This is my preferred method of using the ring flash, after all, why be cliché and shoot through the center—with the latter technique any ring flash will do the trick but with the off-center technique, only a more powerful ring flash unit will suffice, not the novelty units that are underpowered.

One of my favorite ring flash units is the battery-powered, Hensel Ring Flash 1200 P-XS with their optional Oct Sun Haze adapter Hensel introduced last year. I can do this with the Hensel unit that is 1500 watt-seconds output (enough to overpower the sun when using outdoors) with a short flash duration of 1/1300 of a second or better, not to mention, it weighs less than 4 pounds, very lightweight. This unit truly allows you to adjust the flash output in 1/10th stop increments, not with a slide-and-feel-guessing-with-your-touch lever, but a true LED readout with a real decimal point you can see plus switchable audio confirmation.

The optional Octa Sun Haze attachment for the Hensel Ring Flash 1200 P-XS is powered by their battery powered Hensel Porty Premium Plus AS/RC, thus this makes this portable combination an advance method when using a ring flash, not offered by any other ring flash manufacturer. This is the system I use and my photography workshop attendees use for the envied “infinity pool” shots in the exotic Virgin Islands location.

It not only takes advantage of its “angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection” when the camera lens is placed directly through the center opening in the flash ring, but its unique, multi-layered octa-softbox with a built in metal, circular reflector provides for a new quality of light that is not only portable and lightweight, but is useable without the camera mounted inside the ring. Last, it doesn’t create red-eye because the flash is off angle to the camera lens.

The beauty of this unique and patented design is that you can easily slide a full gel sheet right up the light modifier from the front, without taking anything apart. I do this a lot when photographing models at sunset by placing a Rosco Bastard Amber gel directly in the Octa Sun Haze. If you’re one of the 30-40 people that attend my Exotic, International Beauty and the Nude workshops in the Virgin Islands, you’ll see I bring two of these bad-boy Octa Sun Haze’s with me for all to use, especially for those infinite-edge pool shots at sunset.

Things to consider when purchasing a ring flash unit:

1. Weight. If a unit is heavy and you’re shooting with the camera attached to it this makes it difficult for steady operation, it’s very important the unit be as lightweight as possible to prevent camera shake and hand fatigue. Use of a tripod with a camera attached to the ring flash will limit your movements and reduce portability, often at the cost of sacrificed shots--placing a ring flash on a light stand with the camera unattached is preferred. Don’t be fooled by novelty units that sacrifice weight for easily breakable plastic housings that are usually larger than the more ruggedly-built professional units.

2. Portability. The unit should have a handle so you can move freely with it while shooting. Remaining in the circle of arc will allow consistent apertures without re-metering. The ability to use the unit with battery-powered power-packs makes it useful for outdoor shooting.

3. Power. It should have at least a 1200 watt-second or more power output so you can use it outdoors to overpower the sun at a comfortable distance to your subject, this is really important to medium- to long-telephoto lens photography sessions in glamour and fashion photography. Normally you need to be further than ten feet from your subject to surpass the sunny-sixteen rule of lighting. If your ring flash cannot provide at least an F/16 at ISO 100 power output at 15-feet or more, you’re purchasing a novelty flash, or a wannabe ring flash that will wind up in the closet later. Most professionals would never blast their subject with a ring flash closer than 8-feet because when the ring fires the subject will see white donuts for quite sometime, not to mention the potential burning of the retina.

As a test, find where you ring flash unit will provide an aperture of F/16 and stand in front of your ring flash and carefully look right into it when you fire it—as an alternative, put your tongue to the power tips of a 9-volt alkaline battery, perhaps it’s a safer experience (seriously kidding here, do not put yourself at harm with the ringflash or 9-volt battery). I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but remember, you’re planning on having a model in front of that unit, think about how she feels—chances are if you don’t like it, your model won’t either, and remember, it’s always about the face, a happy face. If you wan to photograph a “bee” in a rose, no problems, just don’t get stung as with novelty units you’ll have to get real close to achieve high F/stops for gained depth-of-field in macro situations.

4. Color Temperature. It’s very important in digital photography today that your ring flash provide consistent color temperature output in Kelvin, preferably within 100 – 200 Kelvin tolerance to provide great images as digital photography is white-balance specific.

5. Flash Duration. The shorter the flash duration, the better, this is important when shooting outdoors. Durations of 1/1300 or more are great. This is important when capturing moving objects or action when utilizing short shutter-speeds outdoors, thus providing for a higher dynamic range when intermixing daylight with flash and better flash synchronization. Long flash durations will continue firing while the camera shutter has already closed, often this causes a color-shift toward the blue spectrum and also can cause un-sharp images.

6. Variable Output. Variable flash output is important. Can you adjust your ring flash, without repositioning your subject and light source within 1/3 to 1/10 of an F/stop? There is nothing like 1/10th of an F/stop accuracy. The Hensel unit will not only achieve that with a visual verification LED display, but it can also be adjusted via the radio remote trigger in 1/10th F/stop increments with audio verification up to 5-full F/stops! This is great when you shoot out of the ring. Be careful of those novelty units that claim 1/10th F/stop adjustments but utilize sliding levers—this accuracy is based on human touch and feel (and some good guessing) as the accuracy is based on the user’s feel (touch) and vision when adjusting those potentiometers and it’s more of a “guess” without actual LED numbers and decimal points. As an analogy, can you can adjust your water temperature in your shower to 1/10th of a degree with the water knobs by touch and feel accurately?

7. Be careful with “marketing hype” when it comes to “effective” (power) watt seconds verses “true” watt seconds—the latter is the one that is the industry standard—the one that matters (hint: Check your Thesaurus, true=real). The term effective power is more hyperbole than anything you’ll truly experience and is often referred to as theoretical, but never real.

In a nutshell, a ring flash when used traditionally, through the ring, is in fact cliché, it’s been done over and over and is very faddish, especially in the studio with a seamless background. So be careful and make informed decisions when purchasing a ring flash. First ask yourself, “Do I really need this?” If the answer is yes, then decide how far away you will be from your subject to achieve your desired results--both indoors and outdoors. Novelty units will not suffice outdoors with people, however, if you’re not worried about getting stung by bees, a novelty unit will be perfect when shooting macro shots with flowers.

When you can utilize a ring flash with frosted or clear glass, with an Octa Sun Haze attachment, the quality of light produced is unlike any other light source, especially when overpowering the sun with flash outdoors. Shoot outside the ring, it’s an experience like no other!

(Photos taken with a "professional" ring flash, a Hensel Ring Flash 1200 P-XS, even an amatuer can easily use it, but built with the professional's needs in mind.)