Photography Ring Light

by FABLAB Dhahran

5.4K7312

Intro: Photography Ring Light

One of the great lighting techniques in professional portrait photography is the ring light. This technique gives so nice effect on the eyes just like the picture above. It can be used not only for regular photography, but also, for video shots as well.

So, let’s get started.

Note: This project was made by (Jafar Alobaid and Mahdi Albrahem ) in FABLAB Dhahran

Update: Sep 23rd 2017

This is our second one. I thought I'd share it with you :)

STEP 1: Requirements

• MDF wood ( 1.2 m X 2.4 m - Thickness 18mm).

• 25 light bulbs (LED will be great option).

• Standard Screw-in Bulb Socket.

• Wire.

• Wire and Cable Stripper

• Black tape.

You will also need:

CNC machine.

STEP 2: Designing and Cutting the Ring

So, for the ring design I just used Vcarve software to design the ring. You can make the design using any other software. InkScape will do the job just fine. The outer circle will hold 15 lights and the inner will hold 10. Just make sure to make the circles’ diameter equals to the diameter of the bulb socket.

Note: The ring diameter is almost 1 meter, we made it big so we can get best possible result.

Note: The design is attached with this step. You can just download the file and cut it.

STEP 3: Wiring the Bulb Lights

In this step we just did simple circuit. Just like what’s shown in the diagram. It should work just fine.

STEP 4: Testing the Project

After connecting all the bulbs. Here is our result:

Final notes:

- The weight of the ring was way more than what we expected due to the big size. You can try different type of wood and less thickness to reduce the weight.

- Designing an adjustable stand of some sort will be a great help for you.

- the final result was really nice and it really payed off all the effort :)

12 Comments

Steve6D 8 years ago

Where, exactly, does one go to pick up a CNC machine?

FABLAB Dhahran 8 years ago

not really sure, the one we have in our lab is from :

http://www.shopbottools.com/mproducts/prsalpha.htm

Steve6D 8 years ago

Pretty sure it would be a LOT cheaper to just go buy a ring light.

Or 50 of them...

FABLAB Dhahran 8 years ago

well , there's nothing in the market in this size :)

and trust me it's way cheaper to just make it :)

Yonatan24 8 years ago

Would you consider replacing the warm LED bulbs with cool LED bulbs? It usually produces a better picture

FABLAB Dhahran 8 years ago

yea for sure . we will give it a try. :)

thanks for the comment

Yonatan24 8 years ago

You can always play with the light colors and see which spectrum looks the best for photography with your camera...

FABLAB Dhahran 8 years ago

yea that's right, I was thinking about it too :)

Jonathanrjpereira 8 years ago

Another really good project that uses a laser cutter. I have never used a laser cutter for any of my project's or Instructables. I plan on making this Ring Light inorder to learn more about laser cutting & improve the photos in my Instructables.

FABLAB Dhahran 8 years ago

thanks for the positive comment , we are glad that you liked it .. but this one was actually cut by CNC . I saw small ring lights that was made to be mount on small cameras' lenses and yea it was cut by a laser cutter and made out of 5mm LEDs.