Studio ring lights

Jaffster

Jaffster

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Danny
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As in, the big ring lights used in studios. Not the small ring flashes that sit on the end of your lens.

I'm looking to build one this weekend. There's thousands of guides out there on the interweb, mainly aimed at the smaller macro ring flashes. I'm looking more at a large ring light to produce some nice round catch lights.

Has anyone any experience in building one of these? I've seen several guides knocking around, most of them using 6-10 bulbs which isn't what I want. I want a complete circle, completely diffused behind plastic. I've sources flourescent bulbs which I can have made circular to any size I'd like but I'm concerned about the temperature given out by flourescent. If this was diffused with a tinted plastic over the top, would this be suitable?

I don't mind blogging it, in a step by step manor if anybody is interested.
 
If it's your only light source, you shouldn't need to worry about the colour temperature, just precalibrate your white balance before you start shooting.
 
Kaouthia said:
If it's your only light source, you shouldn't need to worry about the colour temperature, just precalibrate your white balance before you start shooting.
Click to expand...

I'm sure I should have thought of this.

Would this show if I went high key with a blown background? I'm not sure if white balance has an effect on 255 blown areas?
 
The background light colour doesn't matter if it's blown out, as long as all 3 channels are blown out at 255, then it's going to be pure white.

BUT, if the white balance is off, and and it outputs more light in, for example, the green channel than the other two channels, then the green channel maybe overexposed by 4 or 5 stops in order for Red & Blue to also be blown out, which means you could get dodgy green colour casts rim lighting your subject.

So, it's best to get them as close as possible with regard to colour temperature.
 
I have played around with these quite a lot, could never find a circular bulb that did the job, ie bright enough, in the end opted for 12 daylight balanced bulbs that give a very pleasing effect.

If you do find a good light source give me a shout as I would like to see the effect.
 
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