NONE... avoid this like the plague!

very cheap and plastic feel to it. battery compartment defective. didn't even get to use it because I had to send it back to B+H.

HUGE PIECE OF JUNK! I just received this garbage from UPS about an hour ago... I was so happy and excited. I've been wanting a ring flash for awhile to go with my sigma 50mm macro lens. So I open up the box, grab my batteries, go to load them up, and to my surprise- I can't get the battery compartment door to shut. The metal piece on the bottom [connector?] was all broken and falling apart. I tried to fix it and attempted to move it into place... but no luck. So here I am now... no ring flash. I guess that's what I get for trying to be cheap. I should have went for a more expensive flash... maybe a Canon. What really sucks is that now I am stuck paying $5.10 to ship this crap here and whatever else it's going to cost me to ship it back to B+H. I'm going to be out about $10 now. Luckily, I can return it though. Customer service at B+H was helpful.

Customer Service

customer service at B+H was helpful but I am not happy that I am stuck paying for the shipping to ship this thing back.

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none yet.

Price

Cheap/plasticy feel. Doesn't seem to work on digital SLR cameras.

The flash is sold as a "Canon SLR" mount, but the manufacturer doesn't mention that it's not compatable with digital cameras (I had to read that on an ebay auction). I found rumors that it would work on the 10d/20d in manual mode, but I couldn't even get that to happen.

Customer Service

Didn't use.

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Good value for money. High guide number (15m/ISO100). Accurate autoexposure with TTL metering. Fast recycle time.

No manual output control. Horrible cheap & nasty plasticky feel (build quality does not seem to match other Vivitar flashguns). Awkward battery compartment cover. Fiddly attaching to and detaching from lens. Cannot be used with lenses with wide filter threads.

Basic features and cheap plasticky feel, but significantly cheaper and more powerful than most other ringflashes. This is a very useful tool for macrophotography. Part of it sits atop the hotshoe like a normal flashgun, and the light itself screws onto the filter thread of the lens. The top part is obviously modified from a more conventional flashgun, as it even has a vestigial remnant of an adjustable-angle bounce head (completely useless on a ringflash, of course). It runs on four AA batteries, which fit into the top part after removing a horrible, flimsy plastic cover, which slides out completely and could easily get lost. The attachment of the light onto the lens is by means of a built-in 49mm ring, with stepping rings provided to allow connection to lenses with 52, 55 and 58mm filter threads. Using extra stepping rings to mount it on a larger lens would probably result in vignetting, as the light is not very wide. It works absolutely fine on my Tamron 90mm f/2.8 AF macro lens, which has a 55mm filter thread. I usually use it on my Nikon F801 (called N8008 in America - can't understand why a Japanese company use one name for this camera in Europe and another in America, but I digress), and have also achieved good results using it on my FM2 (which has no TTL flash metering, but there is a chart on the back of the flash for calculating the correct aperture). As it has a higher guide number than most ring flashes, one could be tempted to use it for more general photography, but the limited features (see below) make it less suitable. The high output is still useful though, as it allows a small aperture for greater depth of field (which you need to make the most of when photographing in true macro at 1:1 scale). The features on the flash are, as might be expected at this price, pretty basic: no second-curtain sync; no strobe; no facility for filters or diffusers; not even manually variable output, but most of these features are hardly relevant for macrophotography, which is, after all, what this flash is designed for. The limited features are forgivable, especially at this price (quoted in pounds: £65 = about €100/US$100), but the flimsy, plasticky build and the limited lens-compatibility are less forgivable. The equivalent flashes from Nikon and Sunpak may well be more robust and versatile (and certainly compatible with more lenses), but cost several times as much. This is a perfectly adequate macro flash for anyone on a limited budget.

Customer Service

Not used

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