The Viltrox JY-670 Macro Ring “Lite” is a cheap ring flash that I bought in October 2014. Clearly the maker has no space on his web site for such an
antediluvian device. Here a paraphrase of my comments when I got it:
The device really does look quite well-made. The build quality compares favourably with the
mecablitz 58-AF-2, a much more expensive unit. On the other hand, there are some
strangenesses visible in the images of the unit:
It's clearly a modification of their JY-680 normal on-camera flash, now also obsolete:
That even goes to the extent of having a transparent front with what appears to be light
sensors or focus lights behind it. In this unit they have no function. That has some
advantages: the JY-680 boasts a guide number of 58, like the mecablitz, while the JY-670
only has 14, 8.5% of the power. But apparently the electronics are dimensioned similarly,
so the recycle time is very fast. With NiZn batteries it appears to be in the order of 1
second, which is probably the reason for this page in the instructions:
They could have almost completely dispensed with it.
After mounting on the camera, the first problem was to turn it on. Nothing happened. You
have to hold down the power button for 3 seconds before it powers on or off. Mounting the
flash part is easier than I expected, but as others have noted, the connection between the
flash and the control unit is with particularly stiff cable, and it's somewhat inconvenient.
The first photos I took were of a wild bulb I found on the corner
of Ballarat-Colac
Road and Rokewood Junction Road:
That's 50% less power to right and left respectively.
There seem to be two completely separate ways to set flash intensity: one allows you to set
the intensity for either A (left) or B (right), or both. I can set the intensity for each
tube separately, and then switch to AB (both), where it remembers the individual settings.
It's nice to be able to cycle in steps of 1 EV with the left and right buttons, and in ⅓ EV
steps with the up and down buttons. That's a lot better than the mecablitz, which forgets
its manual settings if you move to TTL settings.
But then there's the “Ratio” setting, and I still don't understand how to use it. The
instructions say:
What they don't say is that the thing doesn't react at all until you first press the centre
button. And the settings don't seem to make any difference. They also seem to duplicate
the A/B functionality.
