38 Photography News | Issue 52 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests

Prices £76

In the box 1x R60 light Adapter rings – 49mm, 52mm, 55mm, 58mm, 62mm, 67mm

Number of LEDs 60

Power Four AAs (none supplied). Optional external 5v power source can be used

Output Fully controllable

Duration 120min at full power, 30 hours when dimmed

Colour temperature 5600K

Output 2300 lux at 30cm

Angle of illumination 52°

Minimum working distance 3cm from the unit’s front

Dimensions 15x15x2.8cm

Weight 128g, no batteries

Contact Fotospeed.com

Specs

The Kaiser R60 Ring Light is a neat little unit that is nicely priced at £76. It’s good for macro work, whether that is on location or at home. If you are into fungi, for example, and want to add a dab of light to lift the naturally-lit scene this Kaiser will do the job nicely. It also works well if you want the R60 as the sole light source but of course you have to be close enough, be flexible with aperture selection and exploit the camera’s ISO range. At £76, though, the Kaiser R60 is very good value.

Pros Daylight quality, adjustable output, range of adaptor rings supplied, portable Cons Largest adaptor ring is 67mm

Verdict

Below Almonds photographed with a Nikon D810 fitted with a 105mm lens at minimum focus – the front of the light unit was about 3cm from the subjects.

LEDs are revolutionising lighting, whether that is in your living room, or for video and still photography. These tiny things produce an impressive amount of light for their size, are cool running and energy efficient, and can even be used to produce a flash with high speed sync as seen on the Rotolight NEO2 we recently tested.

The Kaiser R60 is a daylight-balanced, battery-powered ring light featuring 60 LEDs.

Getting the R60 ready for use doesn’t take any time at all – just load four AA cells into the individual compartments, screw the adaptor onto the lens’s accessory thread, slide on the R60 and you are ready to go.

Supplied in the box are ring adaptors for lenses with accessory threads from 49mm to 67mm inclusive. You could probably get the gaffer tape out and attach it to a wider diameter lens but you are likely to have severe vignetting unless you are just going to use a small central portion of the image.

If you need the option of using a daylight LED ring light on a lens with a filter thread up to 77mm, check out the Kaiser KR 90 at £274.99.

The thickness of the lighting unit and where the adaptor ring is positioned does mean it’s not much good with wide-angle lenses – unless again you are going to use the centre.

As part of the test, I put it on a Fujifilm X-T2 fitted with an 18-55mm f/2.8-4 standard zoom which has a 58mm accessory thread. Vignetting was visible up to 30mm but beyond that was fine.

Where the R60 comes into its own is fitted on a macro lens to give smooth shadowless lighting. Most macro lenses are telephoto so the potential vignetting issue does not arise. I have

a Nikon 105mm f/2.8 with a 62mm thread so I tried the R60 on that.

For the test, I checked out its colour temperature performance and output, in terms of power and evenness.

Turn the light on and then you have stepless power control from minimum power upwards.

Measured from the front rim of the Kaiser ring light, I took incident light meter readings using a Gossen Digipro F set to ISO 200 at distances of 10, 20, 30 and 40cm.

At maximum power and 10cm I got a reading of f/5.6.3 (that’s f/5.6 and three tenths) which dropped down to f/4.6 at minimum power. At 40cm minimum power read f/2 and

Kaiser R60 Ring Light £76

f/2.06 at maximum power. Thus, the differential between minimum and maximum power is in the region of EV0.6 so not that much.

Shooting a Datacolor colour test chart, I used AWB then a range of white-balance presets on a Nikon D810 fitted with the 105mm lens. The AWB shots were more or less spot on in terms of neutrality while a setting of 5000K gave a comparable result so slightly different from the quoted 5600K in the specifications.

Light quality is very good giving a good contrast, shadow-free effect and the diffuser panel of the unit gives a good job of nullifying the harshness of bare LEDs. WC

Images Ring lights are used for medical and forensic applications where a shadowless light is needed, but they are good for general macro shooting. This Kaiser unit is ideal for home and location photography.