A while back we had a piece about the power of using LEDs in photography. In that article we had a very primitive LED ring light. In this guest post, Tim Brook shares a much better way to create a LED ring light.
Browsing through the dealextreme website, I came across these LED car headlight rings and thought that they’d be ideal for making a Macro Lighting Ring so I placed my order and had a go. Click to continue ›
Until today there was only one way I knew of to put starts in my eyes - to get a hefty blow to the jaw from the guy you just shot candid.
Until today, that is. Until I saw Laya Gerlock's amazing Stars Ring Light. Fortunately for us DIYers, when Laya heard what we need to get through to see stars, he agreed to share the making of this beautiful modifier.
In this article Mohamed Talal shows us how to make a simple diffuser for a DSLR pop up flash.
There are three things that separate this diffuser from other diffusers we have featured before. The first is the total cost - this one really costs nothing. The second one is the size of the diffusion panel. By using this method you get a nicely sized diffusion panel. Lastly, a quick mod will turn this diffuser to a ring flash.
It is called the Headphones diffuser, but don't feel obliged to use headphones casing, you can use GI-Joe's casings, Transformers casings, or just a nice pieces of transparent material.
DIYP reader Chaval Brasil came up with an ingenious way to create a ring flash. By routing the light from a hot shoe flash to a CD spindle, Chaval was able to surround his lens with light. Chaval joins a long tradition of readers projects that we had here on DIYP (see The Food Saver Omnibounce, Thomas Schwenger Complete Two Seconds Lighting Kit, and The Christmas Tree Ring Light for more readers projects).
Not too long ago, I have posted an article about making a strobe from a disposable camera. I was soon after that I called out to the great community of DIY photographers to make a disposable ringlight from such disposable camera strobes. And why not - they are cheap, available and do not require too much power.
In my mind there were three main challenges in making this project work: 1. Chaining the camera flash units; 2. Triggering the ringflash remotely; and 3. Powering the individual flash units.
Dave Ajax (Divet) from the DIYP Instructables group has risen to the challenge. Dave was also kind enough to allow me to post the full tutorial on this site, keeping the great tradition on DIYP Instructable projects like the Time Lapse Photography project, the Ingenious Camera Stabilizer and the Muslin Backdrop project.
Build a disposable camera ring flash. Disposable cameras are discarded after the film has been removed. Photo labs often have boxes of them under the counter, waiting to be recycled. If you ask nicely, you can often get more than enough to experiment with. Try to get at least six for this project, all of the same type.
Nick Wheeler the photographer who brought you the DIY Strip Light and the Floor Lit Table Top Studio is playing with card board boxes again.
Answering to strobist's ringflash call, Nick created a simple softbox ringflash thingy that uses one strobe to create an awesome ring light effect. (If you really like ringlights, take a look at the huge ringlight collection).
If you did not visit Nick's stream lately, you should definitely head over there. Nick has some new shots from the previous projects (strip light and floor lit studio) with great setup shots. I tell you, sometimes I don't know whether to stare at the pictures or drool over the setup shots.
Nick has done a great job for this tutorial, packing it is great images to explain every little step. You can see how thinking of every aspect of the construction gives professional results.
Part of the fun of being a DIY Photography blogger is being tapped to the great stream of ideas and creativity that flows from the photographer's community. Every now and then I get a mail that makes my day, pointing me to an awesome/ fun/ unbelievable/ getoutofhere project. I also keep regular watch on the DIYP flickr pool to be amazed over and over with DIY projects and creative photographs of readers.
This series of articles which I call "DIYP Readers Projects" is my way to give some loving back to the community and to DIYP readers and expose some of the coolest photography projects around - your projects. The first runner up is the...
I should have seen this one coming. What can you do if you have a ton of SBs and a bit of duct tape? A multi-super-sb-ring-light.
The idea is very simple - take 6 super-duper Nikon SBs and mount them on a cut coffee can. You can use duct tape to hold them on.
Connect 3 pocket wizards with splitters to the flashes and fire away.
No doubt that Joshua Targownik (check out his cool site) has a great idea, here are some of my thoughts on this great ring flash.
Not so long ago, I got a mail from a reader and fellow DIYer Joris van den Heuvel. Joris referred me to his site where to my astonishment I found a ringlight heaven.
Now, I know that the photography web has been sizzling with ringlights ever since David Hobby posted his challenge for a DIY ringflash, but this guy is something else. Got some cool stuff I haven't seen anywhere else.
Starting out with a "regular" one liner LED ring light (AKA Ring Light 1.0), Joris evolved to a two liner LED array and even a three liner. BUT WAIT!!! It gets better. CFFL tubes are yet another version of a ring flash, and.....
Joris's latest work in progress is a fiber optics based ring light (just saying fiber optics flash makes me feel sophisticated and cool). I say - stay tuned for this one - as my friends' say this is something completely different. You know what; check em all out here.
If you have a Technorati account and a spear minute, I'd love it if you add DIYP as a fav. You can use this link.
Related Links:
- Joris van den Heuvel Ring Light Portal - Get your good stuff here
- Strobist Flash Ring Challenge
- DIYP Flash Ring 1
- DIYP Flash Ring 2 Click to continue ›
So, let's see what we had here in the last month: we had a cool way of using a disposable camera and an Altoids box to make a small flash.
We also had a cool way to create a ring light (no wait actually we had two cool ways of doing that).
So, of course the question comes, what next?
In my mind the next step of evolution should be combining the two to create the first ever 25 Dollars professional ring flash.
With disposable cameras with flash costing as low as 3.50, it is simply a crime not to build such studio lighting device. Click to continue ›
