Venus Laowa Front LED Ring Light for 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra-Macro Lens

The quality of light that this ring light produces is great. However, I've bought two of them. Each started to malfunction after less than 5 hours of use, and stopped working entirely after 10. I feel incredibly ripped off.

Very loose fit on lens. Falls off easily and gets very hot. It is a useful light as the lens is pretty dim if it is not wide open. Build quality is nice.

The cable connection point is loose, or there is a short somewhere. The light constantly goes out, very difficult to use outdoors because of this. Annoying to use in doors. I just got into macro photography and this is making me second guess using Laowa products even though the 25mm Ultra Macro was so refreshing to use.

I want to love this but I can't. It works fine enough for some situations where there's not enough light, but I'm using this less and less since I got it and am looking for something better.The worst part of it is that the ring get super hot (as others have noted). I've burned myself more than a few times and accidentally burned a sitter whose fingerprints I was photographing for a project. Totally unacceptable. I wonder what affects it might have on the lens itself. It's often too hot to take off when I'm done with it, so I have to put the whole camera down or remove the lens (with ring light still attached). Not ideal at all!Add to that, the heat makes photographing snowflakes and ice/frost crystals impossible, there's no way to dim or change the brightness--it's VERY bright--so exposures are difficult to get right, and having it plugged into an external power source makes for some awkward maneuvering.I had higher hopes for this ring light and what it would allow me to do. I'm disappointed.