Ring Flash Goodness

The Orbis Applied..., originally uploaded by ted.sali.

24 hours is all it took to order, ship, cross the border into Canada, and get heated up on my little siggy flash.
I'm talking about the Orbis Ring Flash adapter.
Like many other adapters, this unit is designed to slip onto your existing flash and turn your standard flash gun into a small scale TTL ring flash unit.
Let me talk about the order process first, because that was the first thing that impressed me.
I ordered this thing yesterday online around noon, and chose the standard 3-5 day shipping rate. I thought "well, maybe it'll be in time for the holidays..." Was I ever surprised when the thing showed up today about 1:00 pm, and no, they didn't actually upgrade the shipping or charge me extra, it just came through that fast.
Usage is simple, simply slot your flash into the bracket on the unit, attach a TTL (or in my case a pTTL) cord to the unit, hold it in front of the camera, poke the lens through, and shoot away. It sounds a little awkward, and it is at first, but the unit hardly weighs anything, and there are homebrew plans for DIY brackets to mount it to your camera, making it much easier to use.
The results are pretty nice, considering I was just all excited and jumping around shooting whatever without much thought to composition. Like any ringflash, there are almost no shadows, skin textures are nice and smooth, and the light falls off nicely from the center of the image.There is a bit of a trick to holding it nice and straight, but a home brew bracket should fix that.
It's going to take some getting used to, but I have no problem playing with it until I get more proficient.
So far, I'm happy, and it's fun to use.
I can't wait to use this thing at an event, I think the results will be exceptional.