DIY Ringflash

Photography equipment is so expensive, especially when you are trying to start a business and have a lot to buy.  So when I can, I feel its worth investing a bit of time and creativity and seeing if you can improvise a solution.

Having spent a couple of weeks building and modifying a basic ringflash, I decided to take my lead from Chase Jarvis and let the good people of the world see what is possible with a little ingenuity.

My initial attempts began with a design for use with my Nikon Speedlight.  As you can see I built a cardboard frame that would sit on the head of the flashgun and bounce the light up into the ring.

For the ring I got hold of flan/cake tin for about £10, which would allow for the necessary hole in the centre.  In order to create a space for the light to flood in though, I would have to use a saw to cut out a rectangle from one side, making sure to leave the metal flaps (edges filed) to use within the cardboard for support.

(P.S.  If you are going to try this I take no responsibility for your skills with a saw, get a professional to do it if necessary!)

So, as you can see I then needed to bounce the light around the ring as much as possible and this would prove to be the trickiest part.  On properly manufactured adaptors they use prisms to do this, but this would be far to complicated and not at all in the spirit of things...bring out the tin foil.  This is 'Blue Peter' style!

Unfortunately, the tin foil alone was not going to get the light bouncing around enough, so I decided a mirror (or bits of it) might aid my cause.  I only hope this does not bring the 7 years bad luck on me.  You can see though that it has helped to get the light moving around a bit.

...Add a layer of baking paper and the light is spread even more...

And so to my initial tests, and you can see that the system works...wahey!

The above picture was taken with the speedlight at full power, which has produced quite a nice shot, but you can see in the catchlights that there is still a fair bit of fall off in the light being produced from bottom to top.

Also, I was only able to get about f/4.5 at 2 ft from the subject.  Nowhere near what I wanted for the studio.  So I set about modifying the cardboard frame to now fit my Bowens 500 studio flash head, or more specifically, the 14cm spill kill.

This modification actually proved to be far more complex than the speedlight framework, as I had to build a support ring within the framework that would sit on top of the spill-kill/reflector, and convert it to the octagonal shape that I had based my frame on.

With the setup built I could see if it would actually work.  There is always going to be concern over the stability of something that is purely using gravity to hold it in place, even though I had made sure to design the framework to fit very snug to the reflector.  I found though, that I was able to incorporate the screw fitting, used to hold an umbrella, to in turn hold a bar which would stop the whole system from rocking off!

Trying to get the light more even is a case of trial-and-improvement again, as I found that layering up the greaseproof paper, as natural ND's could help to even out the inadequacies. 

And there you have it...the final product in all its glory!!

...It should however be noted, that it is best to turn off the modelling lamp entirely, as this is what quickly produces heat, and it has nowhere to go but up.  Plus, this thing is made out of cardboard and tape and I am not being held responsible for any houses being burnt down.

As you can see the heat of an initial test has frazzled the gaffer tape.

Use it sensibly and have fun with the new possibilities!!