Sony Ring Light For Sony Digital Still Cameras

I photograph a lot of small collectable items such as coins,buttons, artifacts and this little ring light really does the trick for me. A flash was too harsh, setting up indirect light took too long. This was the answer for me. Really a neat accessory.
Richard

This Sony Ring Light does a perfect job of lighting macro photo subjects. Prior to purchasing this I wasn't able to move in as close as I would have liked while taking macro shots (using a Sony T-300.) Say goodbye to shadows on your ultra-close up pics.

With this being a Sony product, I half-expected it to be a little proprietary (i.e. have to use a Sony camera for it to work well). To my surprise, when I tried it with the Sony W80 the position of the ring didn't fit around the lens without quite a bit of adjustment. And from the shape of Sony's other popular T series (also listed as compatible to this ring light on Sony's website), it's obvious that it would be even more of a stretch to get this to fit, although the non-telescoping lens on the T series might make matters easier. However, when I tried this on a Panasonic FX series compact camera, it fit just as well - meaning not perfect and you wouldn't want to leave it attached to the camera for carrying, but it can be adjusted to fit and does its job as a ring light. On the other hand, I do find the light excessively white even on the low setting. Still experimenting on white balance to see what setting might work best with this.

This product is adequate for what it is (A bunch of LED's attached to tripod mount for your point and shoot) and one of the few alternatives for lighting up macros with a point and shoot. It fits the Canon SD800 that I have, but needs a lot of finessing for the lens to fit in the hole inside the LED's. It is ring light not a flash with a low/high setting and you may need to white balance the image first because the lighting is harsh. The macro pictures that I've taken are pretty reasonable. It is a good alternative for taking infrequent macro shots without having to resort to buying a DSLR and macro accessories. I would buy it again.

The light works great on non reflective surfaces. However there are two issues. First, if the surface is reflective, the circular array of white LEDs show up. I guess the same thing would happen with anything that is very reflective, like a chrome bumper. If you take a close up of, for instance, someone's iris, you'll end up with some "special effects" you didn't expect. But, it does look interesting, especially if you center the reflected array of lamps about the pupil. Second, the mechanical setup is cumbersome. I found some modifications were required make the setup easier. Using a Sharpie to mark the height adjustment stem and the attachment slide helps make the second time setup a snap. There is a problem with the gray rubber slide that is held in place with the attachment screw. The screw tightens against soft rubber! This looks like an engineering error. To correct the problem I cut away the rubber between the attachment screw and slide and replaced the removed material with a custom fitted metal washer to take up the same space. After making this modification the light does not flop around when moving the camera. Overall - I'm very happy with this ring light.