Gadgetory

using a ring flash or a ring light is a really great way to get a nice even look for your portraits and also your close-up photography it helps to give a nice shadowless effect on your subjects face and also gives a cool halo effect in their eyes but traditional ring flashes or ring lights can be expensive especially if you only just want to experiment with a technique I'm going to show you how to make your own DIY ring light using tools that you hopefully already have at hand like a big screen monitor or a TV what you'll need is a camera that gives you exposure control a tripod and that big screen that I mentioned you'll also need to make sure that your monitor or TV can display an image on it step 1 download the ring light image from the how-to article on CNET or you can make your own what you'll need is a black background and then on that you'll need to draw a white circle and inside of that a smaller black circle step to display that image on your monitor or TV fullscreen turn the brightness up all the way you can if the blacks start turning into a bit more of a gray dial the brightness back a bit and boost your contrast step 3 put your camera and tripod in front of the screen in the middle of the center black circle you're going to want to crank up the ISO sensitivity to around 1600 or 3200 because you'll be shooting mostly in the dark turn out all the lights and position your subject right in front of the camera so the ring light is providing all of the light onto your subject to position yourself or the subjects you might want to use a camera with a flip-out screen turn on autofocus and then take a few shots trial and error to see exactly where the light is falling the circular ring light works best for the most even look but feel free to do things like triangles squares any other shape you can imagine this DIY ring light isn't exactly the most portable solution out there but it's a great way to get bang for your buck with gear that you already own you