Meike MK-14EXT ring flash review for Nikon

The ring flash is attached to the lens and is clos­er to the sub­ject than any oth­er, mak­ing it ide­al for macro pho­tog­ra­phy. This mod­el has both man­u­al set­tings and TTL mode. Thanks to the TTL mode, the flash receives infor­ma­tion from the cam­era and sets auto­mat­ic set­tings. The ring is divid­ed into two parts, which can be used both joint­ly and sep­a­rate­ly from each oth­er, com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ing one of the sides or adjust­ing the pow­er you need.

Flash Meike MK-14EXT

Characteristics

• Recy­cle time: about 3s
• Col­or tem­per­a­ture: 5500K
• Flash Dura­tion: 1/200–1/2000s
• Light induc­tion: indoor 15m, out­door 10m

Possibilities

• Flash ratio adjust­ment
• Var­i­ous flash set­tings
• Suit­able for macro pho­tog­ra­phy, por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy, jew­el­ry pho­tog­ra­phy, etc.
• Pow­er sup­ply: 4 x AA bat­ter­ies (not includ­ed)
  Weight: 398 g
  Size: 191 x 77 x 60mm

Package

The flash comes in a box made of thick card­board, which con­tains an image of the device, its name and char­ac­ter­is­tics. The box is dense, thanks to which it with­stood all the hard­ships of mov­ing from Chi­na.

Equipment

The flash is addi­tion­al­ly equipped with an Oxford fab­ric stor­age and car­ry­ing bag and adapter rings for attach­ing the flash to the lens. The instruc­tion is in Eng­lish, I high­ly rec­om­mend it to those who have nev­er worked with flash­es. The bag is dense and able to pro­tect the con­tents from mois­ture. There are sev­en rings in the kit, designed for dif­fer­ent lens diam­e­ters. I used rings on an 18–55 kit lens and a fifty-fifty lens, both fit with­out prob­lems.

Appearance

The flash con­sists of a con­trol unit and a ring with LEDs. The device is quite com­pli­cat­ed for a begin­ner, but you can always fig­ure it out, I’ll tell you about every­thing in order.

Control block

The set­tings are con­trolled by press­ing the but­tons locat­ed at the bot­tom of the block.

• PILOT. Test run but­ton. The but­ton is made in a trans­par­ent case, after releas­ing the shut­ter or press­ing it, you can see the readi­ness of the flash for the next frame. It takes 2–3 sec­onds to pre­pare for the next shut­ter release.
• LAMP. Acti­vates the two LEDs on the flash ring to illu­mi­nate the sub­ject. Helps a lot with focus­ing in low light.
• MODE. but­ton to enter the flash mode set­tings and move through the set­tings items.
• A\B. Push­but­tons for set­ting the pow­er off­set from one side of the ring to the oth­er.
• ON/OFF. Flash on/off but­ton.
  Under the but­tons there is a ring with which the para­me­ters are set, in the cen­ter of the ring there is a but­ton for con­firm­ing the selec­tion.
  Below is the flash release lever on the cam­er­a’s hot shoe.

On the front of the flash is the com­pa­ny logo and the ser­i­al num­ber of the instance. A thick wire comes out on the side, con­nect­ing the con­trol unit and the flash ring. On the oppo­site side is the bat­tery pack. The flash is pow­ered by four AA bat­ter­ies or recharge­able bat­ter­ies.

All con­nec­tion inter­faces are hid­den under rub­ber plugs. Since the flash sup­ports TTL mode, there are not one (cen­ter) con­tact on the site, but sev­er­al.

flash ring

The flash ring is divid­ed into two work­ing areas, which are con­fig­ured sep­a­rate­ly from each oth­er. One could say that the work­spaces here are right and left, but the ring rotates freely in the plane and can be rotat­ed to any angle you need. Two LEDs are installed between the work­ing parts of the ring to illu­mi­nate the object.

The back­light of the but­ton sep­a­rate­ly dis­played on the con­trol unit turns on. The light from them is enough to illu­mi­nate the object a few meters from the flash.

There are two spring-loaded but­tons on the side of the ring. By press­ing the but­tons, you remove the hooks inside the ring, this is nec­es­sary to install the flash ring on the lens. Thanks to four retractable parts, the flash ring is secure­ly held on the lens, and also freely rotates in a plane to set the desired illu­mi­na­tion angle. On the reverse side of the ring there are mark­ings of sides “A” and “B”, when set­ting the pow­er dif­fer­ence of the sides on the con­trol unit, you need to focus on these mark­ers.

Adapter rings are designed to con­nect the flash ring to the lens. There are sev­en such rings in the set, each of which is signed with a num­ber indi­cat­ing the diam­e­ter of the lens. A thread is used to install the ring on the lens, and on the oth­er side there is a groove along which the flash ring rotates dur­ing oper­a­tion. The flash ring is held in a ver­ti­cal posi­tion due to the rigid­i­ty of the wire con­nect­ing the ring to the con­trol unit, and in order for the ring not to move in a plane after you turn it, you have to hold it with your fin­gers, which is not very con­ve­nient.

Fit­ting on lens­es 50 and 18–55

Settings

There will be lit­tle text and many pho­tographs. At first, it seems that there are a lot of set­tings, in fact, every­thing here can be eas­i­ly under­stood by divid­ing them into points:

• -TTL. Auto­mat­ic tun­ing mode.
  In the left cor­ner, infor­ma­tion is dis­played that this is TTL mode, in the right cor­ner, the val­ue F.

The first thing to do is to add or reduce flash out­put from ‑3 to +3.

The sec­ond and last adjust­ment in this mode is to change the ratio of pow­er from side “A” to side “B” and vice ver­sa.

• -M. Man­u­al mode.
  As in auto­mat­ic mode, there is a flash pow­er boost from 1\128 to 1.

Set­ting the pow­er ratio of the sides: the same, shines “A” or “B”.

You can also not just turn off one of the sides com­plete­ly, but con­fig­ure it more or less pow­er­ful­ly. Select side “A” or “B” and unscrew the val­ue we need.

Outcome

My first acquain­tance with the flash went quick­ly and pain­less­ly, at first it seems that there are a lot of set­tings that you will nev­er fig­ure out, but in real­i­ty every­thing turned out to be sim­ple. It takes a long time to get used to the weight of a cam­era equipped with a flash, it becomes twice as heavy and at first it caus­es some dis­com­fort, but you get used to it and when you shoot the flash, the cam­era becomes already unusu­al­ly light. As for use, reload­ing between frames takes 2–3 sec­onds, which will be a minus for those who want to shoot liv­ing crea­tures, this fact does not inter­fere with me for shoot­ing objects. I took it for myself only so that I could com­plete­ly close the aper­ture for clar­i­ty of shots, I was pleased with the result

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