Let me preface this article right away by saying that my inspiration for building this contraption came from me stumbling upon a DIY article found here http://jyoseph.com/blog/detail.cfm/post/174.
There are many similarities to my ring light and the one from jyoseph.com, but at some point I just departed from his guideline and made some tweaks you may find useful if you plan on trying the same project.
As a sidenote, jyoseph built his in a night…. let me just say WOW! Do-able, sure if your into that kind of punishment. I’m guessing mine took around 8 hours in total.
Having the litigation nation as a neighbour (yes that’s you America), I felt it was necessary to make a disclaimer on the following do-it-yourself (DIY) I produced below. So before proceeding, you are agreeing to the following:
Disclaimer – from Rob Blissett
By reading this document, you (the reader) agrees to not hold liable the makers of this document for any adverse effects that may come by the use of this document which includes, but is not limited to personal injury or property damage. By using the directions in this manual to make a DIY Studio Ring Light, you agree that you have read and understand this disclaimer and have read and understood that you are soley responsible for your own safety. THERE IS NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED BY THE USAGE OF THIS DOCUMENT.
Copyright Warning
These materials are the sole copyright of robblissett.com, and are protected by Canadian, U.S. and international copyright law.
MATERIALS LIST
- Masonite (aka Fibre Board) – 1/8″ – 3/16″ cut 24″x24″ square (2 pieces)
- 8 pigtail light sockets, or suitable alternative
- Common Pine (cause it’s dirt cheap) – 1″x2″x4′ (1 piece)
- Thin plexiglass or thin balsa for the inner and out ring (tried the balsa and watched it snap, numerous times before I decided I would be more successful drinking a brew…. and then deciding plexiglass would be a better choice)
- #14AWG stranded wire Red or Black, and White as well
- 14/3 or 14/2 cab tire, this is just a fancy name for extension cord wire basically, if your budget minded, just chop the female end off an existing cord and your in business (even if it’s #16AWG, you’ll be fine).
- 1/2″ cord clamp connector
- male cord cap – you won’t need this if you went with the modified extension cord
- Single Pole switch – make sure it’s rated for 120Vac and 10amp minimum (got mine from radio shack)
- Panelmount fuse holder (capable of holding a 10amp glass fuse, again, radio shack)
- 5 amp glass slow blow fuse (or similar)
- 8 Bulbs – I used 13 watt compact flourescents 3500K, you could use a higher spectrum bulb, in this case these were on sale (4 for 10 bucks). A little note about the bulbs, I found that this wattage only gives about 4-6 feet of usable range, and that was shooting at an ISO of 400 and 4.0 fstop. You could always go with the higher rated CFL bulbs, but your gonna pay more too!
- Black paint and primer would help – got mine from the dollar store, suppose to be for interior car finishes, worked for me.
The DIY Build
STEP#1 – LAYING IT OUT
Now if your anything like me, you should first just dig around and see what you already have on hand before running out to the supply store.
Starting with one of the masonite boards that is already been cut 24″x24″ your going to want to find your centre point. If you were lucky enough to get your boards precut and accurate then you’ll find the easiest way to find centre is to get a long enough straight edge, place it in one corner and extend it to the opposite corner, draw a line. Go to the other corner and repeat. Where the two lines intersect is centre, and for some unknown but I’m sure prehistoric reason, that is what we like to call dead nuts. In other words right in the middle.
Measuring half way down and make a mark right on the half way points of each edge, you should now have 4 marks. Take your straight edge again, and make a line across to the opposite marks and you should have something similar looking to the picture on the left.
To mark your circles I found it easiest to run a nail in the centre point, tied a string onto it, and exactly 12″ out on the string I tied a pencil and carefully proceeded to draw the circle, paying special attention to keeping the pencil completely vertical.
For the inner circle I wanted to keep the same dimensions as found on the Jyoseph.com blog, which would give a final width of 4″. So, now I had to re-tie the pencil to 8″ out from the nail in the centre and repeated my circle.
As you can see my circles turned out not too bad… It was a bit of a shame I didn’t have the same patience when it came to cutting them out.
STEP#2 – CONSTRUCTING
To cut out the circles I used a jig saw with a brand new wood cutting blade. To make sure I would get two identical circles I carefully stacked the 2 pieces of 24″x24″ masonite and ran 2 screws through them. I made sure to run these screws in the same spots where 2 of the sockets would end up going. I wasn’t concerned about having a screw hole on my back piece. If your really a type “A” personallity you could always use wood filler to plug your “A” type hole 
Once cut, you’ll want to seperate your 2 pieces, using an appropriate sized hole saw, knockout your 8 holes for the light sockets you decided to use. I determined my size by using a piece of crap scrap I had left over from cutting the circle out, and trying various hole saw sizes until I found one that made my pigtail sockets a snug fit. If you make the hole too big, you won’t be happy. Even though I had a nice snug fit I still ended up using crazy glue to help re-enforce the fit.
Spacer block preperation: before you start cutting your spacer blocks, you may find your perfectly cut circles didn’t turn out perfect, like mine! If this is the case you can’t simply cut 4″ long spacers, you’ll want your spacers to be flush on both ends. My best advice is to draw a line between each of your socket holes on the back side of your face board, I labelled each line with a number (ie. 1-8). I then took my 4′ piece of pine and placed it on the line so that it was flush with the inner edge of my face board. The outer edge is where I drew a line on the pine and numbered the piece the same number I assigned to the line. I continued this until all 8 pieces were marked.
So what’s the point…. well in my case, at some points my circle was just over 4″ wide and others it was under. Had I of cut my pieces to 4″, then the inner or outer trim pieces would have looked crappy (would have had gapping).
Cut your spacer blocks. Put a 3/8 to 1/2″ hole in the middle of block where you will eventually run your wires.
Spacer block installation: hopefully you numbered your pieces to place on the back of the faceboard, you can glue them in place wait for them to stick then flip and nail them in place using finishing nails, or, you can just shortcut that and carefully just nail them in place without the glue…. I didn’t go the glue route, but it’s probably a good idea to give the blocks that extra ounce of stability.
Socket installation: at this point you can now go ahead and place your sockets in the holes. Even though I had a tight fit on my sockets I did end up glueing them in place after-the-fact. My sockets started to spin free when I tried to put the bulbs in the sockets. I would suggest that when it does come time to put your lights in, that you hold the socket base while turning the bulb in anyway.
You may find a bulb that won’t come on and this is probably due to the bulb contact not touching the hot contact at the bottom of the socket. Which does mean you’ll have to twist those bulbs in a little snugger….DON’T TWIST USING THE BULB, USE THE BASE OF BULB TO TURN IN!
TIP: I also ended up (with it UNPLUGGED) using a screw driver to pry the socket bottom contact up a bit to allow for good surface contact with the bulb.
STEP#3 – WIRING
Wiring installation (diagram included): This part is pretty easy, I ended up using some scrap wire from my work #14AWG white and red and ran a section of through each of the blocks, cut, and pulled in a section through the next spacer block.
In the end you’ll have 3 whites (2 you pulled in and the pigtail white) and 2 reds and a black (from the pigtail). The colour of wire you choose is up to you and of course dependent of your state or provincial electrical regulations…. because I’m sure everyone is going to apply for a special inspection, but mainly you need to stay away from green, as it is always (atleast in N.America) reserved as a ground. In this build you won’t be using a ground as there are no metal parts to this project and can therefore get away from it being grounded (also known as bonded).
Now that all your wires are in, you can now terminate (connect) all your connections but leave one for your switch and neutral connection. Strip your wires and marrette all the whites in each section, and your 2 reds will marrette to the black pigtails. It’s a good idea to wrap electrical tape around the marrettes after your done, but not neccessary if you have a good connection.
The switch and fuse: I used a switch and fuse for mine as a convenience. To add this I installed mine on the back cover piece and wanted to make sure the wiring would be localized to the same section, so planning your location is key, as you won’t be able to install the back piece if you happen to have 
your fuse holder over one of your spacer blocks. I found it easiest just to lay the back piece over top of my ring light assembly and placed the fuse holder and switch where I thought would be a good location and just marked them for drilling with a pencil.
As you can see from the pictures I ended up soddering my permanent connection that goes between the switch and fuse and used crimp on connections for the connections coming from the lighting circuit. how you choose to connect is up to personal preference, but my thinking was that I may need to access the wiring from time to time and it’s always easier to completely disconnect the whole backing piece than to have it still connected.
Note: as I mentioned earlier, my circles were not perfect so you’ll want to have your imperfect back circle line up with your imperfect front circle for final assemble, I ended up with a small notch on the inside part of both circles so that is what I used as a guide for mine (the jigsaw did a little dance).
It may seem as though I skipped a step here as my pictures show the inner and outer trim mounted. The timing of when this is done is up to you. I did put the trim on near the end but for the sake of showing my fuse and switch connections, these were the only pictures I had.
STEP#4 – FINAL ASSEMBLY
At this stage you should have something resembling a ring light, of course you still need to wire in your power cord. Since mine is installed through the trim piece, then this part of the wiring is really part of final assembly.
I used a thin piece of scrap plexiglass that I ended up cutting on a table saw to get a proper width. The longer the piece the better. To give you a good idea of your length if you wanted to do your outside trim as one piece it’s calculated as: Circumference = PI * Diameter, ie. C=PI*24, C=75.5″.
If your fortunate enough to own a brad nailer this is ideal for attaching the trim. I simply wrapped my trim around and started knocking brad nails into the spacer blocks as I went. If your brad nails are too long you may end up putting a brad nail into your wiring so be careful with this step.
Now drill a hole the size you need for your power cord clamp in the trim near what will be the bottom of your ring light. If you look closely at my pictures you will notice that I put my power cord so that it would basically be in the 4 or 5 o’clock position, which has the wiring entering in a different section than the switch and fuse wiring. Simply strip the outer jacket back (take care by not knicking your feed wire underneath) and run the power wiring through the existing hole.
Once through I connected the neutral (white wire) to the other whites and the black (hot) wire I installed a crimp-on connector and pushed it onto the switch. If you use a crimp on your going to want to make sure it is tight enough on the switch or it could possibly fall off during final assembly.
Once wired you should be able to place your back peice in position, but make note of where your spacer blocks are located, a good idea is to place a mark on the outside trim piece marking the centre of every other block. I did this so that when the back piece is installed I know where to put my fasteners (just used drywall screws…. hey they were lying around anyway).
ANOTHER TIP: for your back piece… to prevent your spacers from splitting, drill a small pilot hole before screwing in your fastener. 4 screws is adequate, you don’t really need to go screw crazy, you want to be able to still remove the back without developing carpal tunnel from unscrewing the thing.
I ended up spray painting my pieces black before assembly but this can be done after as well, just tape off the parts you don’t want painted. I cheaped out and bought the cheapest knarliest spray paint I could at the dollar store, so yep, it cost a buck. It was a black interior car paint, but it seemed to work out well.
STEP#6 – MOUNTING
This was a different beast to adequately build and anyone that has a better suggestion please let them fly and let me know. This was simply a matter of taking a thick piece of metal, bored it out and tapped it with a 1/4 20 bit, which is the standard thread on a camera tripod, attached another chunk of metal and screwed into the back of the ring light. I have an older monfrotto tripod that when mounted completely vertical, works out ok, but when tilting the light on a subject my tripod is not strong enough and the light starts to creep down.
My first thoughts were of some sort of bracket assembly that would be midway up on both sides of the light but then I wouldn’t be able to shoot pictures through the ring. So basically what-ever you come up with you should leave the middle unobstructed.
THE RESULTS
I’ve attached some shots of 2 my kids (have 3) and one my 7 y/o took of me. Needless to say, really happy with the results. You might want to go with the higher wattage bulb if your subject is further than 5 feet. My shots were done @ 400 ISO and shot around f4 just to achieve 1/60th of a second shutter speed.
I think writing this DIY took as long as building the bloody light Cheers and thanks for checking out my first DIY project.
BTW:: No photoshop involved in making these images
