After reading a DIY tutorial on making a large lightring with lightbulbs and especially after seeing the results I knew I wanted to try this myself one day. It took some time to get around to it but last week when I was playing around with some led-stips I started thinking of this project again. So today on my day off I went to the hardware store and bought the necessary parts to make myself an awesome ringlight.
The design
I bought twelve lights, so I made a circle just big enough so all the lights would complete a circle. I added enough room to be able to be able to add a second row in the future.
Then it was time to start sawing:
With all my fingers intact, I started placing the light sockets on the wood placing the wiring along the way:
The wiring I did parallel btw.
I connected a standard dimmer on the back and added a standard plug:
Then came the moment suprise. I placed a lamp in the last light-socket in the chain to test the wiring.
Luckily it all work fine, so time to finish placing the dimmer on the back:
I first thought to mount the ringlight on to a lightstand but figured this would not be very stable so I used an adjustable cloth rack on wheels that I wasn’t using anyway. This means a stable way to use the ringlight and an easy way to get it out of the way.
I mounted the top bar on the ringlight with tie-wraps after drilling three holes:
and placed it back onto the cloth rack:
The finished ringlight (for now):
A quick test with my girlfriend posing to see the results:
and a 100% crop of her eyes with the reflection of the ringlight:
I can’t wait to really test this ringlight during a model-shoot.
To be continued…