LED Ring Light

posted Nov 16th 2009 1:00pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: digital cameras hacks

diy-ring-light

[Jani] built his own photography ring light based on automotive LED rings. The rings he used are meant to encircle headlights on a car and are available at a low cost. The assembly is built around a filter that attaches to his camera lens. Two rings of LEDs are then glued to a case made from the plastic of a CD-R container. To diffuse the light, he sanded both sides of the clear plastic housing to make it translucent.

LED rings operate on DC power and unlike a ring flash, they provide constant light to help set up your shot. His finished project is well-built and should come in between $10-20.

Comments [26]

tagged: led, ring flash, ring light

Reader Comments

Creative use of CD box, very nice project, spectacular results (I hate making macro shots for the very reason I either get grainy dark crap or overexposed blob from the flash).
I give it 3 strawberries.

Posted at 1:38 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by rasz

Seriously HAD, you need to hire someone to proofread your copy.

Posted at 1:40 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by overslacked

…”make it opaque.”

Maybe you meant transparent? If it was opaque, it wouldn’t diffuse the light, it would block it… it goes: clear…transparent…opaque.

Posted at 2:20 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Chris

All my attempts to use white LED’s to assist photography so far led to horrible results because of poor colour balance. I tried Picasa, SilkyPix and something else.. Nothing seems to be able to balance a LED-lit image satisfactory. I wonder what could be the trick? Probably don’t mix LED lighting with other types?

Posted at 2:24 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by svofski

“…he sanded both sides of the clear plastic housing to make it opaque.”

Opaque? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?

Posted at 2:25 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Translucetron

@svofski: IIRC LEDs are usually a bit lacking in the red spectrum. I’ve read about people who spend a lot of time in the woods with LED lights have modded them to include a red LED to help make things look less flat. I don’t know if that could be useful for photography but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot.

Posted at 2:33 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by sneakypoo

@Chris

I think you are looking for translucent. Transparent = Clear.

Transparent -> Translucent -> Opaque

Posted at 2:33 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Hakria

I’d really like to know how much light this produces. By this I mean at a distance of 3 ft what is your shutter speed if an fstop of 5.6 and an iso of 200 is used? Even an estimate from the author would be fine. I just don’t want to build this to find it’s so underpowered that it’s not useful for my uses.

Posted at 2:40 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Maurice

@svofski

Does your camera have a custom whitepoint setting?

Set the custom whitepoint using the light ring and a sheet of matte photo paper. If the spectrum on the white LEDs fall within its correction range, you shouldn’t have to mess with color correction in Photoshop ever again.

I use the same technique for taking product photos under 850 fluorescent t8s. It provided a far better match than the three fluorescent whitepoint correction presets that came with the camera.

Basic rule of thumb for artificial lighting casts, incandescent = yellow, standard fluorescent cool white = green, xenon flash = blue. The white LEDs I was using a couple of years ago for a highlite effect were bluish, but newer ones might have a better spectrum.

Posted at 2:45 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by sean

@Chris: Indeed, should have been ‘translucent’. Fixed.

Posted at 3:00 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Mike Szczys

@sean: I have a EOS 400D. I normally ignore camera offering, take RAW and then process whatever I find worthy processing in SilkyPix: this is slow but I don’t take many pictures and I like carefully balanced results. Usually I’m able to balance stuff carefully with all combinations of lights: natural, fluorescent, incandescent. But not LED’s.. Maybe I’ll try more some day.

Posted at 3:19 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by svofski

Wow, great hack together of existing supplies and hardware! I think the demonstration photos prove the usefulness of this tool. While the fiber optic flash rings HAD has featured before give smoother light, this is a much simpler solution.

Posted at 3:20 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Skitchin

i was looking forward building a led ring..
nice idea, thanks!

Posted at 3:29 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by mole

Another purpose for old cd cases… Nice build with excellent results..

Posted at 3:47 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by bill hates

The reason for the poor color balance is because most white LEDs output a spectrum with a peak at blue, and a peak at yellow. Blue+Yellow=white, but red and green end up sorely lacking and poorly-lit by standard white LEDs.

Better solution: use RGB LEDs and light up all 3 elements to make white.

Posted at 3:48 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by tyco

tyco, it totally depends what you are photographing. If you are photographing a painting made of red paint, green paint, blue paint and mixtures of these to get all the other colors then the RGB LEDs will work great. If the painting uses magenta, cyan, yellow, and mixtures of these to get all the other colors then RGB LEDs will only show a black image. In reality most materials have a great mixture of pigments so all LEDs look ok, but there are certainly corner cases that will always look bad with all LEDs. I’ve actually seen art that takes advantage of the narrow frequency of the LED and controlled pigments. The moving lights created a very unusual optical illusion.

Posted at 4:04 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by Maurice

Oh goody, yet another ring light…

Posted at 4:23 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by M4CGYV3R

i built one on a cokin P-series filter adaptor (84mm dia) for my nikon D60, 100 x 8000mcd white led’s, the light is very harsh but can be touched up afterwards. the main problem is that it is too bright to take photo’s of people, might make a dimmer circuit
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2431/3887597553_e44f36f6ec_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2524/3888392128_56bac2d892_b.jpg

Posted at 4:58 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by fwank

This is awesome.

Posted at 6:28 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by KF

i really think that i’ve seen this here before, even though it could have been make:blog. anyways, 4 posts a day is too much. 1 hack a day, plus 2-3 extras posts a week.

Posted at 6:34 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by MS619

Chock full of Awesomenosity.

I have seen a lot of DIY ring lights, but this concept is actually worth using, at least as a base to develop from at any rate. Thanks.

Posted at 7:04 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by stunmonkey

Nice! I wouldn’t mind trying one out. Are you selling any remakes? Or is there anywhere I can find a similar one for the price range mentioned.

Posted at 7:42 pm on Nov 16th, 2009 by G7

Well, you’s not using. Diffuser, which won’t help. It’ll make the light less harsh, as well as dimming it slightly.

Posted at 1:15 am on Nov 17th, 2009 by Graham Simpson

If you can afford a 40D camera you can afford one of the cheap ring lights available.

Granted the 40D is a cheap junk compared to the 5D or 1Ds but it’s 3X the price of the digital rebel that takes just as good of photos. (Hint, the camera is 10% of the photo, the lens is 90% of it)

I find it odd that some rich guy would waste a ton of time to make a ring light instead of buying one off ebay for $60.00 that is better built and does not waste a couple of hours screwing around.

Honestly, it’s a neat idea, but by the time you chase down all the crap, you might as well buy something already done that is better and does not look home made. Now make that ring light from 10 3W cree lamps so I can do some really cool longer distance stuff and you got a very cool hack!

Posted at 6:17 am on Nov 17th, 2009 by fartface

@fartface
because its bloody good fun :)
my one cranks at 9W so 30W would be impressive (and would have some rather interesting heat issues)when you build please post pics
i do like jani’s light since it used components for a purpose other than what they were originally designed, a classic “hack”

Posted at 1:17 pm on Nov 17th, 2009 by fwank

GOD DAMNIT!

I was just about to post and submit my build i did last week. It consists of a bendable led srip, a cat food can, a N battery & holder, and some reflective foil….

Posted at 5:55 pm on Nov 17th, 2009 by googfan

LED Ring Light

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