Homemade ring flash

One particular object came to mind: a poultry water feeder that has a perfect "ring" around a flat center circle would be perfect to hack into a ring flash with minimal fuss. It didn't take me long to have this idea as I'm familiar with the water feeder: my family kept a few chickens and ducks in the backyard when I was a kid and one of my household chores back then was to keep the water filled on these things.

So anyhoo, rigging the ring flash based on the water feeder was a walk in the park: cut a "T" insertion at the bottom part to make way for a flash (in my case it's the SB600), then cut a hole big enough for some lenses to go through, paint the ring with chrome spray paint, wait for the paint to dry completely (which I didn't, and left some finger prints on the front :) ). Keeping the SB600 mounted at the bottom was a challenge due to its weight. It's something to improve upon, but as for now, I was too excited to be bothered by this and took some test shots. Oh and although you can use Commander Mode to wirelessly trigger the SB600, I use the Nikon SC28 (courtesy of Nikon Malaysia, of course) to connect to the SB600. I wasn't quite satisfied by the way the light is reflected in the ring (see picture below), looks like it's not evenly distributed and the top part of the ring is not bright enough. Adding a thin layer of paper which also acts as a diffuser solves this problem.

Rigged in about 2 hours


Test shot


With diffuser, much better now

Without further ado, here are some shots taken with the ring flash that cost no more than RM10.

My Nikita

Taken with Nikon 50mm lens




The ring flash has very limited range, suitable for close-ups and macro shots like below

One of my cats, Macmac

Taken with a D80 using D40's 18-55mm kit lens



Notice the ring reflected in his big round eyes? These were taken with the ring flash off-camera instead of having the lens through the center hole like the ones above. I find that it works marvelously as a portable diffused light source, perfect for close-ups and macro shots

Upclose and not very personal

These were taken with Nikon 105 Micro lens


How I usually look in the morning before my coffee

 

 

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