It's my first time

Playing with a ring flash...

In my attempts to recreate the lighting effects that Jill Greenberg achieves I finally caved and bought an Alien Bees ring flash (ABR).

Did a quick test with Tammie, and my gridded Creative Light 3' Octabox. Very interesting results, but I'm not yet sure I'm using the ABR right.

First, how about a shot where it's the only light source? I can't think of a better subject than Clyde. I've been trying to catch him in his favorite sleeping position. As usual he woke up as I got close, but I think the ABR might have intimated him, cause he stayed in place for a change.

Get in close with my 24-70, and light falloff looks pretty good here. On-axis lighting works pretty good on hairy subjects, huh?! I also like how the unique shadow created by a ring flash helps him pop nicely.


But I said Tammie, yes? I put her close to the wall, and positioned the octabox to feather across her face and dialed in my light:

Next, add in some fill with the ring flash:

Not bad, huh? The octabox is killing the ring shadow on her right, but you can see it behind her left shoulder.

I pulled Tammie away from the wall, repositioned the octabox, then moved my shooting position to pick up more of the gradient caused by the octabox's grid. I like that part, but notice that the ring flash shadow is larger and all around her. The falloff from the octabox makes sense, moving it away causes the wall to go darker, but I expected the same from the ring flash since I had to back up my shooting position as well.

Then again, the octabox is a diffused light source, even though it's gridded. The ring flash is a hard, undifussed light source and as such it doesn't fall off as fast.

Nonetheless I was caught off guard by how big the shadow was. Based on images I've seen in magazines and photography articles that discuss the use of ring flashed, I expected it to be barely visible. This seems much larger than it should be. Then again, the ABR is a rather compact unit, smaller than most higher end units. Perhaps that's the difference?


Gonna have to play more and see what I can do. However, I'm really psyched about taking a model outside with the octabox, ring flash and my Vagabond portable battery and do some location work!