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 If you’ve had experience shooting close-ups with ring light flashes, you know they’re great when you need light that penetrates deep into complex mechanisms, and eliminates most shadows. The downside? Glare is hard to control, and reflective surfaces can be frustrating to photograph.
Enter Samigon’s new Halo-Light FRL-1, the world’s first continuous (nonflash) ring light. Perfect for use with digital cameras, it lets you fine-tune your shot while monitoring it on the LCD screen. Since the light source is fluorescent, however, you will need to correct the color.
We tested the FRL-1 on a Minolta Dimage 7, and were very impressed. Here are the lessons we learned:
• White-balance the light: This setup is optimized for digital—and color balancing is a snap with a digital camera’s white-balance control.
• Use a tripod: Light output is not as strong as that from a flash. You’ll need support whether you use digital or film. (Even less light reaches your subject when using film, because most macro lenses for 35mm SLRs are about 100mm; therefore, the camera is farther away from your subject, reducing the intensity of the light. On ISO 200 film, my exposure was a pokey 2 sec at f/5.6. Yuck.)
• Don’t go too wide: Use LCD- screen feedback to help select focal length. Too close, and a “doughnut” of illumination will be clearly visible. Zoom out too much, and you’ll have to move your camera back, causing light falloff, resulting in longer exposures.
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The result: Ring light casts no shadows;
monitor feedback helped us get rid of nasty reflections. |
You could shoot film—but the results won’t be perfect. Daylight-balanced film and a Singh-Ray fluorescent filter will produce a slight magenta cast. But with no filter, the pictures will be green. (We warned you!)
What’s in the box: The Samigon Halo-Light FRL-1: Primarily used on digital cameras, the Halo-Light FRL-1 has a fluorescent lamp, and comes with a Series 7 adapter and 49-, 52-, and 55mm lens rings to fit digital compact camera lenses that can accommodate filters. For cameras without this capability, a folding bracket is available ($30). Six AA cells provide up to 30 hours of 5000K light. (An AC adapter costs $12.) A detachable cylindrical white hood, also included, intensifies and concentrates the light. Street price for the unit is $110. For more information, contact Argraph: 201-939-7722, www.adi-digital.com.
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