7/52 - DIY Ring Light

OK, well, let me start off by saying that I know these pictures aren't great...technically speaking. This week, it was more of going for an effect than trying to make them great.

I'll try, over the next couple of weeks, to get better pictures using the same effect, but I wanted to at least get something posted for the week.

I've always really liked the look that you can get using a ring flash. Typically, ring flashes are used in close-up portrait photography or macro photography because they tend to give a nice, all around light with very little shadows. Also, when you're shooting portraits with them, you get a really cool, circular, catch light in the subject's eyes. You really tend to notice it when you see it and it always caught my attention.

Since ring flashes are typically very expensive, I looked around on-line a lot on how people made their own DIY ring flashes. One method I came across wasn't even for a ring flash, as much as a constant circle of light.

Using a Circline Fluorescent light bulb, they were able to get much of the same effect, for considerably less money ~ $10-$15 versus $300-$450. The down-side to this is that the light isn't nearly as powerful as a standard flash, so you have to get much closer to your subject to get the same light power, or slow down your shutter way too slow. Also, lugging around the light bulb versus having the flash attached to your camera is a bit of a pain as well. But, for $300 savings, I figured I could make it work.

So, I set about getting and building my own ring light this weekend. I got the bulb, which came along with it's own ballast, starter and light socket connection, then built a small cardboard reflector to attach it to (in order to use as much of the light bulb's own light as possible). In the picture of Paige, you can see where I attached the bulb to the reflector using black zip-ties. As soon as I get some white ones, I'll swap them out, so they'll be less noticable. Granted, you can fix all that in photoshop, but if you can fix it before you shoot it, you might as well.

So, that was about it. I'll keep playing with the light going forward and try to get some new pictures to add. But, as far as achieving what I was going for, I was really happy with the results. In the future, I'll look into getting a bigger light bulb, so I'll get a bigger circle as the catch light and less shadows in the picture, but for now, the one I have will work. I'm looking forward to using it more and seeing what I can get!





Let me know what you think.

T