Site Supporter Registered: March, 2019 Location: Fort Bragg, California Posts: 14 | Review Date: March 17, 2020 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 7 |
Pros: | Small, light, cheap | Cons: | requires some "tweaking" to be really usefull | | I have three of these (the Vivitar Macroflash 5000 variant) and with a simple modification I find them quite useful.
First a bit about them. They mount to the lens via a Series VII adapter which, if you don't get the ones that came with the kit, can be tricky to find. They don't have the power saving circuitry common in newer units so they take the same time to recycle (and use the same amount of battery power) no matter what the power output. Pushing the "on" button activates the charging circuit (button glows green) but if the flash isn't used for a while it turns itself off (this is the only way to turn it off anyway--short of removing the batteries). It has two modes of operation-auto via a photo resistor sensor on the front of the unit, and manual full power. It is not a very powerful unit but I find it very useful in conjunction with short focal length macro lenses. In this application the photo sensor that controls the flash duration is so far to the side of the lens that it basically has no idea what is going on and is thus useless.
The cure for this is to modify the unit for complete manual control (macro photography is pretty much a manual thing anyway). The modification is cheap and easy to do only involving replacing the photo resistor sensor with a variable resistor (potentiometer). Once done you have a small ring light that fits nicely in your portable kit.
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Pentaxian Registered: September, 2017 Location: South Wales Posts: 2,902 | Review Date: December 2, 2017 | Recommended | Price: $20.00
| Rating: 6 |
Pros: | Very cheap and does the job | Cons: | No "Off" switch, no exposure confirmation, low power, does not work well with re-chargeables, slow re-charging | | [Note on 19 July 2020 : I have added a Postscript having bought a second unit and done further experiments. The new one is labelled "Centon MR 20 Ringflash" but is otherwise identical.]
This is a basic, but for my purposes adequate, ring flash. Mine was used from ebay where there are plenty (along with the Centon, Vivitar, and Starblitz equivalents) at bargain prices. Ensure you get the adaptor rings and connecting lead; mine was missing the hot shoe adaptor but that is easily replaced.
Oddly, there is an "On" button but no means of turning it off other than removing the batteries. There is a "Test" button, but the lack of exposure confirmation makes it rather pointless; that would have mattered more in film days but a digital test shot costs nothing. There is only one auto power level (at f5.6 at 100 ASA), and the one manual level is by a slider obscuring the sensor. The lack of other (reduced) power modes hardly matters as it is only GN 5 to start with.
I find I need to press the "On" button again to recharge it after every shot, but perhaps that is only a fault in my example. It is consequently slow to work with, but I do not mind as I mainly take technical pictures. It might be less satisfactory for eg small animal photography. [But see Postscipt]
The battery door is a weakness; it takes the force of the battery contact springs and on mine the tiny catch tabs had broken off. There were signs of Duck Tape use by the previous owner, but a plastic cable tie used as a garter around the body holds the door shut and can be slid on and off readily. It is incomprehensible why so many flash units, even expensive Pentax and Mecablitz ones, suffer from weak battery doors; most childen's toys have better :-( POSTSCRIPT :
Fed up with the broken battery door latch on my first copy, I bought another from Ebay, cheap (£8) "for spares" because it lacked attachment rings and the connecting lead, which I already had. It seems that the broken latch was not the only fault on my first unit - the new one does not need switching on again after every shot like the first one did.
This is not a thyristor unit. That means that in Auto mode, when the subject has been sufficiently lit it dumps its remaining energy rather than saving it towards the next shot. This makes re-charging just as slow when in Auto mode as in full Manual mode.
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