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 :)