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How to use a ring light with colourful backdrops for amazing portraits

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I share a lot of lighting setups on here and every time I do, not only am I trying to share something unique, but I’m also trying to share something that’s practical and easy to implement for as many people as possible.

For the most part, I think I achieve that and although not everybody has access to all the kit I do, I still believe that certain elements of every setup I share are accessible by all. This is me trying to soften the blow of this week’s setup, as although not everybody will own all of this kit, cheap alternatives are viable and failing that, at least the DIY background and basic lighting principles involved are very much achievable by all. As always, if you have any questions about any of it, don’t hesitate to drop them down below.

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Build your own 3D printed DIY LED ringlight for your smartphone

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The problem with mobile phones is that if you need lights, you’ve usually got two options. The first is to simply deal with the underpowered, far-too-close-to-the-lens built in LED. Unless you’re using in the front camera, in which case that’s usually not an option. The second is to lug around all the usual LED lighting gear you’d use with regular cameras. In which case, you probably might as well just use a regular camera.

The folks over at Adafruit, though, have come up with a great project to help solve this. A 3D printed smartphone case with a built in LED ringlight. Not only does it wrap the light around your lens instead of being right next to it, but it also offers a fair bit more power. That it’s controlled by an Arduino also means that you can reconfigure the lights to give some neat effects.

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How to build your own heart and star shaped DIY ringlights

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It’s December. So it’s safe to talk about Christmas now, right? While the technique isn’t specifically related to Christmas, these videos obviously are. The music kinda gives it away. In this pair of videos, YouTuber Eva Landry builds up two DIY ringlights from scratch. One in the shape of a heart, the other a star.

The construction is pretty straightforward using only cardboard, tinfoil, a string of Christmas lights and some gaffer tape. For a quick build, though, they seem to work very well. You’re also not limited to just hearts and stars, obviously. You can make them whatever shape you wish.

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How To Build A Killer 4-Feet, Double-Ringed, 27-Bulbs-Powered Ring Light

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Honestly, I cannot believe this went under the radar for me. Photographer Dani Diamond just broke our ring light record, not by making it any bigger, but by adding a clever inner ring making it the first double-ringed DIY light I’ve seen.

The outer diameter is 4 feet and it features 12 bulbs in the inside ring and another 15 (actually 14) bulbs on the outside, making it a 27 bulbs monster. The only bulb that is missing, making it a 26-bulber is the topmost bulb that Dani uses as a clever mounting point, booming it rather that mounting it on a light stand.

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How To Build An Uber Strong Ring Light For $25

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OK, OK, I am a sucker for ring lights, don’t hate me. This build by DIY Perks combines the benefits of LED lighting (i.e. bright, continuous, cool) with the awesomeness of a ring light (smooth light, no shadows, glamorous look).

If you’ve been around the blog for a while, you know that we consider ring lights to be one of the best creative tools, and we have featured ring lights as big as 4 feet, and as small as 4 inches. This one is in the middle of the range, though probably brighter than both.

The makers at DIY Perks (who also made this LED panel) made one of the nicest ring lights I have seen to date.

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How To Build A Square Ring Light for Less Than $10

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I know that Square Ring Flash is kind of an oxymoron, I mean how can it be both square and ring shaped. Well if they can do it in boxing, we can do it in photography. Making a square ring light is significantly easier than making a circled ring light, as strait lines as easier to handle. So easy in fact that you can be done with a ring light in half an hour and $10 as Isiah Xiong demostrates.

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How To Build A Kick Ass 4 Feet DIY Ring Light

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Ring lights have a very specific light signature. Mostly it is connected with fashion photography as it gives out a very flattering light. The light is coming from around the lens, but since it is symmetrical it seems as if the light is coming right from the center of the lens.

Small strobe powered ring lights can be used for stills but if you want something really impressive, you would go with a huge wooden bulb-driven ring light. While those are a bit harder to transport, they give out a spectacular light that can also be used for video.

(Oh, and make sure to check out those crazy catch lights at the sample pictures at the end of the post!)[Read More…]

DIY Macro Lighting LED Ring

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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.
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Create Stunning Stars In Your Eyes With a DIY Ring Light

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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.

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The Headphones Pop Up Flash Diffuser

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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.

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