This is a good little ring-light for the price. I would recommend it as a beginner unit to try and see if you like this kind of light for your work. It gives a nice amount of diffusion to your light, but subjects have a strange dark aura around them, which you probably won’t want. The light is also nowhere near as soft as a decent off-camera setup with large diffusers like umbrella or soft-box. This might have seemed obvious, but I was still a little surprised how harsh this light looks in most situations. I bought the light mostly to use for macro photography, but haven’t had a chance to use it on any really extreme close-ups yet. I’m still pretty sure this will be a great tool for macro, but don’t expect to get pro-looking results for portraits if you’re more than a few feet away. The light is still only about 6 inches across, so take the whole light-size vs subject-size concept into account when deciding if this light will be appropriate for the subject at hand.
As far as the build quality, the unit fits perfectly on my SB900, but it really has no way to hold itself on. The built-in clamping knob is extremely poorly designed, and is more likely to un-thread itself than actually hold onto your flash. I still have to figure out how to rig something (maybe some rubber strips or grip-tape?) to hold it on the camera better. It has already fallen off my camera once due to leaning too far down, but luckily it didn’t shatter on the hard floor or anything – so that’s a good sign. It is pretty sturdy besides the ineffective mounting system – you can tell it’s cheaply made, but it doesn’t seem like it will fall apart any time soon.
Oh, and I too had to paint over the light-grey logo area on the front of the flash. I didn’t want that big Coco logo showing up in reflections in my shots – very poor design on that part of the unit. They should have had something more simple on the top of the unit where it wouldn’t cast reflections all the time.
Sorry for the long rant. Overall, this appears to be the best ring-light you can get for this price to try on an SB900, so you might as well get one to see how you like it. Just be aware it will take a good bit of tweaking to be able to use it on a regular basis.
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