A photographer friend was telling me about a studio she shoots at closing down, and how she wanted to start work from home but all the lights and equipment was so expensive. Around the same time I read an article about "Ring lights", the rings of light that are often used for close ups to give soft shadows and to sometimes give the really interesting ring reflection in people's eyes.
I figured I'd be able to make her one for pretty cheap, so she told me to go ahead and build one. I know film makers and photographers have made these before, since it's a pretty rare effect. A few people made these lights already, in a very similar way that I planned on doing. The basic concept was to just mount 8 regular lights onto a piece of plywood, cut a hole out in the middle and attach it to a tripod.
I picked up the light sockets for under $2 a piece, an electrical box, dimmer, switch cover, L-brackets and some really thick power cord and a 3 prong plug to make the cord. I laid out everything on the plywood and cut out the shape as well as a circle behind each light socket to be able to wire them out. To save money, I just covered up each of these holes with a piece of scrap wood.. but to do this whole thing a bit neater, I'd suggest making the whole thing completely enclosed.
The wires ran into the electrical box and through the dimmer, then out to the really long power cord I made for it. I used the L-Brackets to attach a piece of wood onto the back where a tripod shoe could be screwed on, so the whole unit could be attached to a tripod during shoots. The whole thing was painted with flat black paint, specifically the high temperature stuff since I figured the lights would get pretty hot.
1/5th of the materials cost was the dimmer switch, which was the heaviest duty one I could find, but was still only rated for 600W. Which means that the the ring light had a maximum of eight 75W bulbs. It would be easier just to have a switch instead of a dimmer, then you could use as powerful of a bulb as you want. I do think that when the dimmer is set to "full on", the dimmer's rheostat is completely shorted out.. so I'm guessing 120W bulbs could be used with the dimmer, providing you don't attempt to dim it.
The effect is pretty neat when you shoot directly through the hole in the ring light. The shadows are very soft and a persons eyes always look interesting with the ring reflection in them. I imagine this setup would also work very well for images of items, or even macro photography.
Anyways, check it out
