Nissin Macro Ring Flash MF18

[FallingHorse]

Any one using the Nissin Macro Ring flash? Would love to know what you think of it. Also can anyone tell me if LED macro ring flashes are any good?

[Bennymiata]

I have a very cheap, no-name ring flash which I use with my Canon 60mm macro, and it works very well.
It cost me about $130 from one of the cheap Chinese sites.
The only thing with it is that you have to adjust it from the camera menu, rather than from the flash itself, but this is no problem.

I also have an external Nissin flash, and I find it to be very good.

LED's may be OK, and I have used an external LED light from time to time, but it has nowhere near the power of a flash unit.

[FallingHorse]

Thanks Benny - I am trying to figure out if I should go for the cheaper version or the Canon version :)

[Bennymiata]

If you're comofrtable with going into the flash settings menu of your camera, which is very easy, especially if like me you put it in your My Menu, thenthe cheap ones will do the same job as the expensive Canon.
As ring flashes are used for close-up work, they don't need to be very powerful anyway and in fact, even my cheap one is too powerful on full power anyway.

The trick is to buy one that fits your macro lens, but having said that, most of the cheap ring flashes come with a step down and up set of rings to fit most lenses.
My one is a perfect fit my my Canon EF-s 60mm macro, but I have to use an adaptor to fit it to my Sigma 150 macro.

About the only time I set it on full power is for use when I'm doing portraits when Im taking the shot from about 2M away, and ring flashes are great for portraiture as they leave a nice circular gleam in the model's eyes.

I initially bought the cheap one, well, because I'm cheap, but I did buy it with the thought that I would use it for a while then buy a genuine Canon one, but the cheap one does the job so well, that I have no interest in spending all that money on a brand name unit.
Having said that, I do like the Canon twin flash unit as you can set one flash differently to the other to get better shadow effects, but I can do the same thing with tissue paper on one side of my cheap ring flash anyway.

[FallingHorse]

Thanks again Benny - I did find an even cheaper one than the Nissin, it can fire the tubes independently as well as ratios from 1:8 - 8:1 and the power is adjustable down to 1/128 at $400 cheaper than the Canon one, I am leaning towards it. The seller said it was compatible with Canons E-TTL, though I do mostly use manual flash :)

[Bennymiata]

Sounds good to me!