Photography News Issue 55

Photography News | Issue 55 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests

Kenro KFL201 Macro Ring Flash £129.99

Specs

The Kenro KFL201 Macro Ring Flash is a lighting attachment composed of two flash tubes and two LED lights, which sit in a circular array, mounted around the front element of your lens. For starters, that’s not really a ring, is it? I mean, if by way of engagement, you gave someone a ring which was basically a two sections of circle, joined by plastic sections, they’d rightly tell you where to put it. You might say, in fairness, using two flash tubes is how manymacro‘ring’lightsarenowmade, and it allows asymmetric control. But your intended will have lost interest by this point, amorously surveying the £2300 Profoto ProRing2 Plus, with its majestically large single flash tube, even though it’s way too big for their finger. These metaphors, are getting a bit mixed, aren’t they? Anyway, the KFL201 is designed for macro work, but, like all such lens- mounted lights, should be able to give some interesting effects on portraits, too, with a very even, shadowless lighting effect, and distinctive catchlights. With the flash emitter on the lens you can add light very close to the front element, where you’ll be focusing for macro effects; but this is useful whenever lighting is awkward due to obstructions. It comes with eight adapter rings, allowing use on lenses with threads of 40.5, 52, 55, 58, 62, 67, 72, and 77mm, a decent level of coverage, and you can fit stepping rings for missing sizes; beyond 77mm, say when mounted on a lens with an 82mm filter, you could use a step-down ring, though you will get vignetting. The rings are plastic, but solid enough, they screw in easily and the emitter mounts neatly, with a locking button on either side. However, after mounting I found I couldn’t secure its angle; there’s mention of that feature in the instructions, but there didn’t seem to be any grip and it wasn’t possible to go from, say, side lighting to a clamshell arrangement, without physically turning the camera or holding the emitter. The unit is small and light enough for easy transportation and won’t weigh the front of your lens down or cause any problems in composition.

Prices £129.99

In the box KFL201 macro flash, lens adapters, bag Guide number 14 (ISO 100) Power TTL of manual in ⅓ stop increments Maximum sync speed 1/320sec Colour temperature 5500K Recycle time 1-5secs Power supply 4x AAs, or power pack Angle of light 80º Ratios 1:8 to 1:1, asymmetric in ½ stops Contact Kenro.co.uk

Images For a lovely, shadowless light, this Kenro ring flash unit does a fine job with plenty of power in reserve and it is very reasonably priced too. Lens adapters up to 77mm screw thread are provided in the outfit.

Connected to the pack by a thick coiled cable it’s possible the tension of the cable might cause problems on longer lenses which rack out a long way when focusing; I tested it on a Nikon D810 and 60mm f/2.8G macro, and found no such problems as the lens focuses internally. Cycled via the Mode button there’s TTL (where you can also bias the energy by +/-3EV), and manual, and a ratio setting for either. You bias the power between the tubes from 1:1 and 1:8(or8:1).Onlyinfullmanualratio(1/1 to 1/128 power) can you switch one of the tubes off entirely. The light has a guide number of 14, which is plenty for macro; in fact, it’s easy to overexpose when shooting a subject up close to the emitter. At about 3cm, with ISO 64, and the flash on 1/128 power, I didn’t get good exposure until f/10. In TTL mode it was still overexposing, even at -3EV, by nowhere near as much, and was spot on at f/5.6. Kenro quotes effective distance as 20cm to 5m, so presumably TTL isn’t guaranteed below that. Obviously you can use an ND if you need to, but it’d be nice to get much lower power settings. At greater ranges, TTL was good. Setting power and ratio you use the main dial and a button within it. I found this a little light in touch, and as a digital dial, you can keep cycling through flash compensation forever, so it’s too easy to go from +3 to -3EV without knowing. Overall it handles fine though; buttons are clear, and there’s a big backlit LED screen, though the text is quite small. Recycle times are fine for macro, ranging from 1sec to a pretty lengthy 5secs, but it’s unlikely you’ll be using those highest outputs, as mentioned above. At the low end you can easily shoot focus stacked images with flash. The Canon version also has a multi (stroboscopic) mode, but we had the Nikon variant on test. Running on four AA batteries, you can’t expect Li-ion type life and consistency, and the number of shots

Used with care, the quality of light is good for macro

depends on the type of AA you’re using; but it’s rated from100-800 shots and I got beyond 400 with no power warning in general use. The flash has a power save mode to extend life. Used with care, the quality of light is good for macro. For florals and wildlife, I found best results when mixing it with natural light as a fill; as the light is very soft it can look a bit too flat otherwise. Of course you can bias the strength to one side or the other. For portraits it gives a reasonably soft, but still quite direct look – the emitter is too small for proper portrait ring lighting, and this also means you get quite a small broken circle catchlight. Colour consistency was good; there’s no obvious change from 1/128 to full. The focusing lamp is helpful, coming on automatically in dim conditions, and can be used as a (very subtle) fill light when the flash is turned off. It would be nice if it functioned like a modelling light, with a scalable output, but that didn’t feel like much of an omission, especially at the price. KS

Verdict

An affordable and well-performing macro flash. It’s £200 cheaper than similarly spec’d Metz and Sigma lights, and £400 less than the Canon. That said, you can pick up a Neewer version that looks identical for £50. Pros Costs a lot less thanmany, handles easily Cons Not a full ring and too small for crossover to portraits