The AB Ring Light: A Shooter's Review

Another cyber-buddy of mine whom I've never actually met but hope, one day, to meet is John Fisher. Fish is a commercial, editorial, and fashion shooter in Miami Beach, Florida.

Everytime John posts something, like he did today on the Glamour1 forum, I'm always attentive to what he has to say. (Some guys are the kind of guys you pay attention to.) John's been around the photo-block more times than he probably cares to admit, so his words are always well worth the time it takes to read them. Today, John wrote up his personal review of Alien Bee's new Ring Light and, with his kind permission to re-print it here, I thought many of you might also be interested in Fish's take on this new product. (Plus, I love it when someone else ends up writing the blog for me.)

Don't forget to check out Fish's website by clicking HERE or on his name above.

Here's what John Fisher had to say:

A Ring-ing Endorsement

Alien Bees has introduced their new ring light to the market place as many have mentioned recently. I was fortunate to have one sent to me in time to use on an important editorial assignment, and once I had an opportunity to play with the light, it delivered the results I'd hoped to see.

First, a ring light is a strobe which is fashioned in such a way to wrap itself around the lens of your camera. Originally, these lights were small and designed for macro and medical photography. A standard flash extending up from the camera body would often be positioned in such a way that it would be impossible to properly illuminate a subject located very close to the lens. These original ring lights were small, fit only a few lenses (usually a macro 50mm), and were very lightly powered. Eventually a fashion photographer would take a picture of a model using one of these things and we would be inundated with the distinctive lighting of the ring light.



So, what is that distinctive lighting effect? First, using a ring light to do head shots creates an almost perfect beauty light. The reason for this is that the flat light going straight into the face produces virtually no shadows. Remembering that a print (or a picture on a printed page) is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object, you notice that we can't see depth. What we see is perspective and shadow. Eliminate shadows and you eliminate almost all common blemishes on the face, particularly lines around the mouth and eyes and creases in the forehead which disappear like magic. No shadow, no lines.

Another unusual characteristic of the ring light is that it reflects most strongly the surfaces which are flat to the lens. Take the legs and arms, the center line of the arm (or leg) is flat to the lens (and therefore brighter), and as the arm curves away from the center line, it reflects less light to the camera. This gives the effect of creating a harder edge, an effect we would normally use black reflectors to create in the studio.

Another (and frequently observed) effect created by a ring light is that any object placed close to a wall or backdrop will display a shadow on both sides! The closer the object is to the backdrop, the tighter (and harder) the shadow will appear. The further away the object is from the backdrop, the wider and less distinct the shadow will be. The resulting shadow will be similar in many ways to the drop shadow we use in type setting to highlight text and to give it depth.

My thanks to Kaila Rainey (above left) who agreed to allow me to do this simple picture to demonstrate the ring light effect.

Hand holding is possible. (Assuming you can leap tall buildings at a single bound!)



Modern ring lights used in fashion and glamour have been around for a while, but as the power has gone up, so has the cost and the weight. The pack and head systems we normally associate with the larger ring lights frequently cost many thousands of dollars, and are difficult to use outside of a studio setting. Alien Bees are famous for their relatively inexpensive monolights which have proven to be both durable and reliable. (They may look weird, the controls a bit cheesy, but they work!) The ABR800 (the designation for Alien Bees ring light) is a mono light (no separate pack required to drive the strobe), it is relatively light (relative is a relative term as the pictures will show), and can be driven effectively in the field using the portable Vagabond power source. The Vagabond has been around for a number of years, it uses a rechargeable battery to produce 110 volts to drive the AB monolights when a wall plug is not available.


Pictured Right: The ABR800, EOS 20D, and the 70-200L 2.8 mounted on a tripod with the Vagabond power source.

Okay, now to actually using the ABR800. The first thing you notice is that assembling the light and attaching it to the camera is not something you want to do in the field until you have done it several times with different lenses on your dinner table. This becomes even more obvious when you want to put the camera on a tripod. Certain lenses (like my 70-200L 2.8 zoom) represent a real challenge, but once you have done it several times it's still a pain but the results are clearly worth the effort. I ran into a problem with certain lenses which wouldn't allow the hood to remain on the lens and still fit into the ring light. In it's current configuration, the diffuser which fits over the flash bulbs is translucent (as you would expect), but the portion which extends into the throat of the ring light is also translucent (it appears to be silver, but it is not opaque). This can (and often does) cause a problem with flare. The solution is simple, black duct tape placed on the portion of the diffuser which extends into the throat of the ring light will eliminate the flare (or jamming the hood for my 70-200 into the throat works as well!).

The original mounting post on the ABR800 wasn't long enough to allow you to center lenses in the ring light if your camera had a grip attached (as both my EOS 20D and EOS 5D normally do). No biggie, just remove the grip, which has the additional advantage of reducing the over all weight of the light and camera assembly. A bigger problem is if you have an EOS 1 series camera which has a built in grip which is not removable. Alien Bees does have a mounting post extender available, and is now shipping all units with the extender as part of the initial package.

The last problem I ran into is that the basic mounting assembly is designed in such a way that it can be used for hand holding the camera and light (which I prefer), or to mount the camera and light on a tripod, and finally to mount the light off camera on a separate light stand (where it works much like a beauty dish!). The problem is that you have to add or remove a lot of parts as you move from one configuration to another. In particular, the mounting hardware for the light stand consists of a number of small parts (including a number of different sized washers) which can easily be dropped and lost. The answer is to have at least two mounting brackets, one for the light stand which can be left fully assembled and a separate one for hand holding or using a tripod. I believe this will become part of the final package as AB sorts out all the reports from the field trials of this new unit.

Given the complexity of producing a powerful, light weight, and reasonably inexpensive ring light, with the legendary reliability of the Alien Bees monolight system, I believe AB has hit a home run with this new product. Currently the light is available for $399(!), or a fraction of the cost of similar units from other vendors. The product is not advertised on their website when I checked last, but if you are interested (and have an adventurous side!) contact them by phone and they should be able to put you on the list to receive one as they are assembled.

The model (left) has appeared on the cover of virtually every major fashion magazine, and has done many of the big collections. I paid for overnight shipping just to make sure I had the ABR800 in time to take this shot.

As a disclaimer, I have been pushing AB for two years to produce this light. However, I am not part of Alien Bees and pay full retail for all their equipment I use. (I'm not particularly proud of this fact. As all who know me will attest, I invented cheap and prefer free.)

John

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Flash! Hold the presses! This just in-- Fish responded to a number of questions posted on the forum in response to his AB Ring Light review. I thought I'd add the new info to today's blog update as it might answer some questions that are rolling around in some of your noggins.

More from Fish:

Now, on to questions! First understand that the ABR800 is a work in progress. Making a ring light compared to a standard studio strobe is like comparing going to the moon to flying a glider. First, the ring light is a system, the light really must work in combination with the camera and lens. Yes, you can put the light on a stand and use it like a regular strobe, but that defeats the purpose.

Now, from a design standpoint, the designers must take into account all the cameras and all the lenses that every whack photographer is likely to attach to the ring light. This adds a layer of complexity that would simply drive most away from the project in the first place. If I'm going to make a specialty light and sell it for a bazillion dollars, the problem is simplified by the fact that the photographers likely to buy the light use a class of cameras and lenses which are of a more limited size range. (An EOS 1 series camera and the Nikon pro cameras may be different, but they and the lenses used with them are almost exactly the same physical size).

In addition, wide angle lenses are all over the map in physical size. Both Nikon and Canon make specialty wide angle lenses which are designed for the smaller foot print you get when the recording chip is smaller than a strip of 35 mm film. Canon also makes several digital cameras which are full frame, and those lenses don't work on that class of camera. The wide angle lenses are the ones which are going to give the engineers headaches because where the end of the lens is physically located on the mounting bracket for the ring light will determine whether you get flare or vinyetting.

Given all of this, I believe Alien Bee did the right thing. Do the best you can, get the light out into the market with a limited number of photographers who understand what they are getting into, and resolve the issues as they arrise in the field. The reason many of us were pushing AB to develop a ring light is that the company (and it's parent, the Paul Buff companies) have been on the cutting edge of using the latest technologies to produce high powered, reliable and inexpensive studio strobes. If anyone could figure this out, it would be Paul Buff. The down side for AB is that everyone will want one, and most consumers have no idea how complicated these lights have to be (and I suspect designing the light itself was probably the easiest part of the problem).

I have used the ring lights made by ProFoto and they are amazing. In the studio you can get wonderful results, and in the field as long as you have a couple of sturdy assistants and the budget for generators and production vehicles you can also produce fantastic images. But if you want a ring light that works, is designed for use in the field, and will not force you to sell the Ferrari to own, then the Bee is a great choice.

This picture of Brandi (the headshot from above) was taken with an EOS 20D, using my 70-200 2.8L, with the camera and ring light mounted on a tripod. The ABR800 was powered using the Vagabond portable 110v power source (designed and sold by Alien Bees). The shot was done at ISO 100, f 5.6, and 1/200 of a second. We were outside on the big deck at sundown (you probably recognize Shaquille O'Neal's house in the background). Metering is always a challege as when you move the output from the ring light must be adjusted. Fortunately when using a zoom on a tripod, you are able to frame the picture differently without moving very much.
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