@GardenersHelper -How do you find the Kx800 in day to day use? I'm thinking making it my next purchase as it offers more flexibility than ring flash.
Im worried I might spend more time trying to find the best lighting positions with 2 heads than actually taking the photos.
I'm afraid my experience will probably not be relevant for you. That is because I use close-up lenses mounted on telezoom lenses rather than using a macro lens and/or extension tubes. Because of the particular camera/lens setups I use it turns out that I can arrange the KX800 flash heads so they work for all the magnifications I use without having to adjust them. It also turns out that I don't have to adjust the power of the flash as the magnification changes. I only have to change the flash power to take account of how light or dark the scene is.
If you use a macro lens, extension tubes and/or reversed lenses then it will probably be different for you. As the magnification changes the distance from the camera to the subject will change and this may mean you have to alter where the flash heads are pointing. As the magnification changes you may also have to change the flash power, for two reasons. One is that you may have to alter the flash power to take account of different distances to the subject. The other is that as you change magnification the effective aperture will change and you may have to adjust the aperture and/or the flash power to take account of this. And as the KX800 is a manual flash, you will have to make any adjustments to the flash power yourself rather than having the camera do it for you (and that also includes any changes needed to take account of how light or dark the scene is).
I used to adjust the KX800's bendy arms quite a lot, but these days I'm quite cautious about adjusting them. On one arm of one of my KX800's (I have three), on separate occasions, I broke two of the loc-line connectors and had to superglue those connectors together, which reduces the flexibility of the arm. I think perhaps the plastic in the arms becomes brittle with age. (I have been using KX800s for five years, but the breakages happened after two or three years I think.)
That was all rather negative I'm afraid, but there is another side to this. Once I had some diffusion worked out I felt the quality of light I was getting was better with the KX800 than I had been getting before. Also, in several videos I have seen Thomas Shahan using a KX800, and he uses macro lens/extension tubes/reversed lenses. He has used lots of different flash setups. Possibly he uses the KX800 all the time at the moment, I don't know. This tweet shows that it was his current setup last October, but bear in mind what he says in a follow up tweet - "This will all likely change - I've never been satisfied with any one lighting/diffusion setup.". Anyway, have a look at his images, for example
his web site or
his Flickr account. You won't get images like that just because you use a KX800, but it does show what is possible using it.
(I see that his current diffusion setup is also a lot simpler than mine, and probably loses less light. I need to experiment some more!)
