Godox’s RING 72 Macro LED Ring Light is a small, portable ring light that attaches to the lens of your camera to produce bright and consistent illumination.

It’s designed to work for both video and stills photography, so let’s take a quick look at the specs:

In the box

Other than the actual light head, there are a handful of accessories and adapters included. Here’s the list:

• Light Head x1
• AA Battery Holder x1
• Controller x1
• Adapter Ring x8 (Adapter Ring sizes: 49mm, 52mm, 55mm, 58mm, 62mm, 67mm, 72mm, 77mm)

Tech Specs

Godox’s RING 72 is an extremely compact ring light that’s been primarily designed for close-up and macro shooting. Like all Godox products, it’s been extremely well designed, with incredibly simple controls and ease of use.

Here are some of the tech specs:

Information	Values
Output Power	8W
Brightness Control	Separate controls for the left and right halves
Dimming Range	10-100% adjustment in 10 different levels
Power Supply	AA batteries, Rechargeable Ni-MH batteries, Lithium battery
Colour Temperature	5600K
No. of LED Lamp Beads	72
TLCI	>97
CRI	>96
Weight	245g (without batteries)

The controller slots onto your camera’s hot shoe. It’s a simple design with an on/off switch, power lights and two dials labelled from 1-10 which control the left and right hand sides of the light independently.

The dual power supply allows you to use either 4 AA or rechargeable Ni-MH batteries or a lithium battery. The RING 72 can use either Godox’s VB26 battery from their popular V1 flashgun or the WB100 from the AD100Pro light. One thing I noticed was that if you’re using ordinary AA batteries, you’ll need to make sure that you’re using a good quality, high-end brand. Cheaper AA batteries simply don’t have enough ‘oomph’ to power the ring flash.

The ring flash and controller are attached by a stretchy coiled cable, allowing you to use the ring flash ‘off’ camera if you wish. One of the things that I really liked about this flash was the large selection of adapter rings that it’s supplied with as standard (8).

It’s a decent range that allows most mirrorless and DSLR users to find a lens that they can comfortably use the ring flash with. Once you’ve attached an adapter ring to your lens, the ring flash simply slides onto it with a click.

In Use

The Godox RING72 really couldn’t be simpler to use. Once it’s switched on, the light is continuous and you simply adjust the power using the dials on the back. The light is consistent and evenly spaced if you have both dials set to the same number.

As I mentioned above, you do also have the option to adjust the two sides of the ring flash separately, allowing you to vary the contrast of your images and add dimensionally if you choose to do so.

I think the ring flash is ideally suited for macro and macro copy work, but I would recommend shooting on a light box or reflective surface for best results. This is because, although the Godox does a great job of illuminating small objects, the fall-off from the light is fairly hard and sudden.

So you’ll want to diffuse this as you’re going along. By the same token, it would also work well if used in a light tent.

I can see this ring flash being extremely popular with those starting out with lighting as it’s so user-friendly. It’s also attractively priced! But the clue is in the name – Macro LED Ring Flash. This isn’t a beauty or headshot ring flash, it’s simply not quite powerful enough for that. But it does the job it’s designed for well!