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(More customer reviews)Although I will mention various Canon products in this review (purely because I'm a Canon shooter), you'll still be able to get some value from this review regarding the Manfrotto 330B flash bracket as a Nikon, Sony, Sigma, or whichever other brand of SLR system you use.
I recently purchased a macro lens (Canon 100/2.8L IS) and upon perusing various macro photography forums, realized that many of the amazing close-ups of bugs are shot with flash -- yes, even for outdoor daylight photos.
Many Canon shooters use either the Canon MT-24EX Macro Twin Lite Flash (preferred) or the Canon MR-14EX Macro Ring Lite (less powerful with less control) when shooting macro but since I own 2 Canon 580EX II Flash units, it seemed to make more sense (financially, at least) to use those for lighting my macro shots. That's where this Manfrotto 330B flash bracket comes in play.
The bracket is very simple in design. There is a base-plate that you mount your camera to. This plate is connected to a main base-plate via a metal hinge-rod that you can tighten or loosen with a tightening D-shaped ring so that you can rotate the camera for either portrait or landscape shots. Two aluminum arm brackets attach to both ends of the main base-plate via a screw that tightens with another D-shaped tightening ring -- this allows you to adjust the distance and angle of the flash heads. At the end of each arm bracket is a flash mount where you mount your flash units.
So far, this is all good stuff but clearly, this unit was not designed for bigger flash units like the Canon 580EX II, Canon 430EX II, Nikon SB-900, Nikon SB-800, Nikon SB-600, etc. I mounted my two 580EX flash units (using diffusers attached to the flash heads to soften and broaden the output of the light) to each flash mount on the bracket and positioned them so that they were at what i felt was a good angle and distance from my subject. Then I tightened the arms on the bracket and was ready to shoot. I simply set one of the flash units as a wireless master and connected it to my camera via a Canon off-shoe flash cable and the other one as a wireless slave. From there, I can play with the power output of the flash units so that one acts as the key-light and the other acts as a fill-light. And since the master flash is connected to the camera via a physical cable connection to the camera's hot shoe, the power output of the flash heads are controlled by TTL. Very happy with the results. Of course, you could always use Pocket Wizards or some other remote triggering system and dial everything manually if you so choose.
However, the downside of this bracket is that with these heavy flash units, it doesn't take much to cause the arms of the bracket to move out of position -- even when i've tightened them down very tightly. So every so often, I find myself having to reposition the arms as they tend to move out of place. What could have made this flash bracket better is if Manfrotto had added some sort of adjustible bar that goes across both ends of the bracket arms. So instead of just tightening up the pivoting screw that holds the arms in place, both arms are supported by each other with a bar that's screwed onto both arms.
Overall, the Manfrotto 330B is a good option for mounting two flash units to your camera for macro photography with complete control of your macro lighting from your flash's settings. However, its downside is its poorly engineered bracket arms for supporting the everyday common flash units made for today's SLRs as their weight tends to move the bracket arms out of position.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Manfrotto 330B Macro Bracket Flash Support for 2 Shoe Mount Flash Heads (Black)
This bracket allows two flash heads to be mounted with a camera onto a tripod head. Attachments: 3/8" & 1/4" female threads & 1/4" camera fixing screw.load capacity : 2.2 lbscolor : black colormaterial : aluminum materialattachment 2 : 3/8-Inch female thread attachment typeattachment : 1/4-Inch female thread attachment typeweight :8.77lbs
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