MagMod Wildlife Flash Booster Field Review

This is the MagMod Wildlife Kit: a tough silicone band holding two very strong magnets which is stretched over the front of your speedlight, an extendable rubber snoot-like hood and a fresnel lens that slots into a rebated channel around the inside of the hood.

Ring-tailed lemur up a tree.
Canon EF 300mm lens + 1.xX Extender
It's a tricky shot because lemurs live in the canopy 15 to 35 feet above the forest floor, forcing you to shoot into the light, thus producing significant underexposure.

Same shot brightened using Photoshop. I could do a better job if I spent more time on the editing process but you get the idea. However much editing you do, it's not going to be an ideal result.

This is the fully extended MagMod
Once the device is attached to the magnets, grab the front end and pull to pop it out to its full extension. It fits on most larger speedlights.
You can also use it fully or partially collapsed. As mentioned in other reviews, extending the hood is easy - collapsing it for transport is a little more awkward and requires a bit of jiggling about. 

Straight shot using the MagMod.
This gizmo produces a far better initial result - the speedlight is set to minus two stops because the MagMod concentrates the light so effectively. There's a bit of flash shadow behind some of the branches which I don't like but nevertheless I think it's more than acceptable considering the amount of foliage and back lighting.

In Photoshop I darkened the edges, adding a small vignette to emphasise the lemur's face and limit reduce the flashed look at the edges of the frame. Advantages: Overall this is a good accessory. It's easy to attach to the speedlight, very easy to open and use. It's somewhat harder to collapse and store but, importantly, it seriously extends the direction and power of your flash. I used this extensively in the rainforest with the flash exposure compensation set to minus one or two f-stops and still got good coverage at distances of up to 40 foot or so. What this product does do is open up m,any more possibilities for getting good wildlife shots where, without flash and the added power of the MagMod, you'd end up with yet another black silhouette against a bright sky.   Disadvantages - Not many - it's not heavy (compared to my Canon EF 300mm f2.8 lens with Extender) but I was aware of its fragility when slipping and sliding along rainforest trails. It got caught several times in the undergrowth - but that's the environment in which it was being used - nothing to do with the design of the MagMod itself. 

Ring-tailed Lemur with pineapple
MagMod fill flash

Mongoose LemurMagMod fill flash

Mongoose LemurStraight shot - no fill flash