lighting DIY ring light

Cracker Funk

Cracker Funk

Shooting a music video in a few weeks. I'd like a ring-light. I've found a plethora of designs for DIY LED ring lights. Seems simple and easy to make (and inexpensive).

But would an LED ring light be powerful enough? Wouldn't an LED ring light be more suitable for shooting closeup photography?

I'm thinking I'd be best off with something a little larger, with maybe 10 100W bulbs.

Thoughts? Agree/disagree? Experiences?

Thanks.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
What types of shots are you trying to get? A strong ring light can light at a distance, especially with stronger (1w or larger) LEDs, but has a pretty distinct look. I'm not sure if 10 bigger bulbs would give quite the same "ring look".

The video for Far East Movement "Like a G6" features some up close ring light shots, take a look at the reflection in their glasses.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks, Paul. Yeah, that's basically the look I want (in the G6 video). But if you fast forward to the :44 mark, you can see the reflection in better detail -- that's a serious LED light. Probably more than I can make on my own (plus, cost is a factor).

Originally, I was thinking I'd use this guy's design (if you fast-forward to the 9:00 mark, you can see the lights in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhkjtkPz8s

I saw that he had 10 bulbs, and I kind of just guessed with the wattage.

However, I think I like this guys' better, and he only recommends 12 40W bulbs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmvNuop0hzg

So, that's what I'm leaning towards, but I think an LED ring light would be not just easier to make, but a lot smaller. As far as DIY is concerned, how much power would I need from an LED to get the desired look? I'm rather unfamiliar with how LED works, to be honest.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
An LED design will certainly be less power-hungry, and as your rightly pointed out, a lot lighter and smaller too. My main concern with LEDs (on a budget, anyway), would be colour temperature and CRI issues - given that it'll be illuminating the subjects' faces, any nasty green spike or colour temperature difference is going to be very noticeable. If you can get hold of some decent LEDs then that shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know if that's going to end up being cost-prohibitive.

(As an aside: what I would choose would be largely dependent on the CT of the shooting environment - if you're only going to be using it outside, LEDs are a much better choice, but if you're shooting in largely 3200°K light, nothing looks better on skin than tungsten.)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Got my ring light. I decided to go with tungsten for two reasons -- I don't think I could afford to build an LED ring light powerful enough, and I want the tungsten color temp. Total cost - $40.

Obviously, aesthetics wasn't my top priority. :lol:

ringlightfront.png


ringlightrear.png


The dude who's tutorial I roughly followed used 12 40-watt bulbs. But I wanted to keep mine small for portability, and mainly because I plan to use it handheld. So, I'm going with 8 by 60W.

The camera and it's support rod are both held in place by wing-nuts, cuz the opening in the ring is barely big enough to put the camera through. By being able to quickly take the support-rod off, I'm able to easily mount the camera, and then place the whole thing back on the ring.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
CF, that's awesome! Putting handles on the sides pointing downward would make it a bit like a "fig rig"... which would be pretty cool :) - and on the point of the wattage, 100w x 10 = 1Kw which is TONS of heat and possible damaging to your lens/camera, so the one you made is much better suited to the task at hand :) LEDs would be more portable though as you could run them off a battery rather than wall current.

Chillpie: the "green spike" is generally from florescent lights rather than LEDs which tend toward more bluish - which is quite correctable either in camera or in post using white balance tools.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Okay. Finally got to give it a whirl. The rig I built has both positives and negatives.

The issue is the size. I built it small for a couple reasons. Reason #1 was just the logistics (and affordability) of transporting it to the shoot. I live in Richmond, VA. The shoot was in Atlanta, GA. So, I wanted something small enough to pack in my airline luggage. Mission accomplished.

Reason #2 (perhaps more important) is that I wanted something I could do handheld. A couple of you mentioned that if I modified it, I could use it like a fig-rig. No modifications necessary. It's small enough that I can hold the outside, and it's a very steady fig-rig (the footage linked below is supported by none other than yours truly - you can see that I occasionally drift out of the green screen).

The downside to the small size, if you're using DSLR, is pretty big, though. My camera kept getting hot. I had to unplug the lights in-between every take, and had to let the camera rest quite often. The close proximity of the lights to the camera is definitely not recommended.

So, unless you have a similar situation, in which you need to transport your ring-light via airline checked-baggage, I recommend a larger rig to give your DSLR plenty of breathing-space. And then, since you lose the natural fig-rig nature of it, a couple handles might help.

Anyway, without further ado:

The green-screen is lit by 4 250W construction lights. Ring light is 8 60W bulbs.

http://vimeo.com/21426186
PW: indietalk
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nice green screen lighting.. should be a snap to get a great key off of that..

That ring light does BEAUTIFUL things to faces and sweet eye light... I gotta make me one of ... wait.. no.. dolly is next.. dolly is next... dolly is next..
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top