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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

Soccer season has started up for the kids again. This also being the first season for our 3 year old Colin.

This is my first season now shooting with some Canon “L” glass, my 70-200 f2.8, it does scream “hello I’m an expensive Canon, lense”. For all other previous years I’d been shooting with the very respectable 75-300mm Canon lense. To compensate for the shortcoming on reach with my new lense I have a 1.4 teleconvertor mounted to get me close on the long end (270mm).

For the shots posted I was shooting as high a shutter speed as possible (naturally) with the lowest ISO I could get away with. In the end, due to a setting sun I ended up settling on ISO of 1000, did some unsharp mask (for sharpening) in photoshop, and then ran a noise filter to clean up the noise (graininess).

On to the soccer. Noah played forward in the first half and was in goal for the second half. So obviously these shots are out of sequence. It just so happens I didn’t get any fantastic first half shots, and I generally like to put my best stuff up first… kinda like watching Saturday Nigh Live, all their best stuff is at the beginning while the less memorable skits are always left for the second half of the show.

In his opening game (due to a scheduling mix-up he missed the actual first game) and he scored the first goal. What a great moment, although not in a great position for capturing of this moment, I was atleast able to get the sequence.

I was pretty happy with his goaltending pics. A lucky composition and some good timing helped me get this first shot. Although the image did not come out razor sharp, I was still able to sharpen a bit in photoshop. 

The end of this match up ended in a 4-4 draw, or a tie as it is also know. There wasn’t an overtime, or a shootout. Just a fantastic game that deservedly ended in a draw.

I have 2 more kids also in soccer to help me fill up this blog through the summer. So check back for some more pictures of the kids enjoying summer soccer.

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The other day he accidentily left his top loading automatic fuji film camera on the top of his car as he drove off… and guess what, it became destroyed after another passing motorist took aim for his now shuttering camera lying in the middle of the road. My father will tell you it was a premeditated act done by a soul-less individual.

I do have to admit however, that even for a point and shoot camera, I think the results he was getting from that little camera were quite good. The one thing that really stood out for me was the colour was always spot-on. The focus decent when printed at 4×6 size. The review window on the back of the camera, non-existent.

With the price of a decent point and shoot dropping like a rock you would think that this would be the perfect opportunity to change formats, but this is my dad we’re talking about. A couple days later he calls me up, full of excitement, to tell me about his new purchase, er, I mean, purchases. You see, he started looking for a replacement “film” camera at a couple of the local pawn shops but had no luck. So while driving pass a thrift shop he thought he should check it out.

They had three “film” cameras, and after some heavy duty negotiating he walked out of there with $7.50 less in his wallet…. Why three, cause you never know if a serial “film” camera killer might be in the area.

The next day he was in Port Huron just looking around, doing some cross border shopping, when he ended up in another pawn shop, and unbelievably enough, they too had a “film” type camera. So he bought that too! Again, if the killer strikes again, what are the chances he’ll take out all 4 cameras. I guess pretty good if he leaves all 4 cameras on top of his car!

So in the end, is it so wrong to still be in a dying format, I wonder if the camera killer also works for the film companies who are no longer going to make film. Admittedly, for me, the results from film, even on a point and shoot, still produces a quality image… and if he’s happy with it, why not. I know that in my case, my recently purchased canon “L” glass could have bought roughly 500 of his thrift shop cameras. If I ever leave that on the roof of my car, well I shutter (insert groan here) at the thought.

Shooting sports in ONE SHOT mode therefore becomes a little tricky and you really have to be quick when it comes to refocusing the subject as they are moving (ie. pressing the shutter half down). Obviously this becomes tedious, but the payoff is a fairly reliable chance of getting an in focus moment, dependant of course on many other factors as well.

The problem starts to come into play when you are shooting wide open (ie. 2.8 or lower) and now your shallow depth of field makes prefocussing a bit of an issue especially if your subject moves towards or away from you the instant you decide to capture the moment. The best solution from all the information that I’ve scoured from the internet is that AI SERVO is the best bet. One caviet, this mode will only use the centre focus point for focusing…. which I figured is acceptable in a fast moving situation, but leaves very little room for creative composing during moments of inactivety that you may want to catch. I mean who wants to have to  switch back to ONE SHOT mode and then back to AI SERVO mode constantly.

And then I found there is a solution to this. A fairly well known one too! I wouldn’t exactly call it a secret because it is published in the canon manual, but really who reads that crap anyway, kidding. So what I found is that if you venture into the menu system and down to the ‘custom functions’ area (C.fn), you go to the 4th selection and you choose the first option (ie. C.fn 4-1), you’re camera will now focus by means of the * button on the back of your camera. The exposure setting is taken care of by the shutter release button being held down half way but will NOT focus any longer.

Initially I thought, ya, so what. Don’t see the advantage…. well, here is where this really works well. Say I’m shooting soccer or any other situation where there is a lot of movement, and typically you’ll find a lot of times there isn’t a lot of action, but when the action is there you need to be ready for it.

Now using this technique, that is being in AI SERVO mode and also having your ‘custom function’ number 4 set with option 1, you’ll be using the * button to focus on the action as it happens, you can keep shooting as the action starts moving toward or away from you confident that you will have more keepers than deleters. 

If you see something that’s happening statically while there is no play going on but you know you want to compose your image with the focal point placed off centre, you simply lock your subject with the centre focus point and the * button pushed down, release the * button and now you can recompose however you want knowing that your subject will be in focus (providing it or they don’t in any way of course).

So the jury is still out, but I’m liking it. My wife on the other hand may not like it and I suspect I’ll get a call on the cell phone the day she goes to use it and finds that it won’t focus. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Go ahead and give it a try, you might like what you find. Rob.

So, anyone else that stumbles across this and is looking for the solution, well it may not be what you want to hear, but this will give you the best quality image. For the most part, this solution is found here at the developers site click here for the RSS feed I subscribed to for more info.

In a nutshell, a mod that had an effect on quality, but for me, not enough was to change the change the code in wp-simpleviewer-admin.php in line 1183 from imagecopyresized to imagecopyresampled. In the end, my best quality results are accomplished by following these directions.

Really, the only thing I’m offering here is a workflow that helps me, especially since I had 7 galleries to convert back to a more decent offering of images. Basically, when you run the WP-simpleviewer plugin it creates a thumbnail folder (tn) and a picture folder (reg), which incidentally is where the generated images go.

1. So in my case I use my origional files on my laptop for the gallery I want to improve and place just those images in a temporary folder and use the Automate feature in Photoshop to create a web photo gallery, setting my image quality to 8 and image size to 450 pixels.
2. Once the gallery is created I go to the images folder of my newly created webgallery using an FTP program and transfer the photoshop created images into the ‘reg’ folder of the gallery that I’m trying to improve the quality of. I agree to replacing the old images with the new, go back to my weblog page, hold the ’shift’ key with the refresh selection (Internet Explorer) to clear out the cache and test my gallery…. if everything was done correctly, you should notice a distinct difference between your old images from your new.
3. After I’ve verified everything is working for that particular gallery, I go to the temporary directory I created to store the images from the gallery I wanted to create a gallery photo page from via photoshop and simply delete all those images. I then go to the other temporary web directory I used for photoshops destination folder and delete all the content out of there.
4. Now I’m ready to complete the whole process all over again. The nice thing about this process is that the Automate feature will now use my newly created default directories and I don’t have to go searching for the directory I want to recreate.

As an example of my folder naming structure this is what I use:

My gallery source folder on my laptop: galleryTemp

My gallery destination folder on my laptop: webTemp

Good luck to ya if you’re into using this gallery. Esthetically this is one of the best looking galleries, especially when your into clean and simple, and lightweight is great as well.

Rob