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3 ways to use a ring light in photography

Ring lights might appear to have one purpose. But in this video I’m going to share three ways that ring lights can be used in photography.

Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

I have three ways that you can use a ring light in your photography coming up. Hey, this is Scott Wyden Kivowitz, a storyteller with a camera talking about all the things photographers like you and I are thinking about. In this video we’re going to talk about ring lights and how they can really have an impact on your photography. I use a ring light whenever I am recording a video at my desk. I don’t typically use it here in this set. For this type of video. Ring lights can be a really, really great for creating just beautiful light on your face and not really letting it bleed outside of your face and letting your camera sit inside of it. So this is a ring light. Now, this is not a video constant light, ring light. This is actually one from ray flash. I’ve had this for years. I have the Orbis one, which is another brand that’s similar to this.

Uh, this, I, I know to be honest, I haven’t used this one in so long it, I broke it and how to tape it up with gaffer’s tape and that’s been holding it fits my sb 800 flashes from Nikon. It does not fit flashes that are bigger than that. So I really haven’t been able to use this in a long, long time now. But this is a ring light. Basically the flash goes in here and it illuminates the ring here. There are many types of ring lights. Like I said, I have a led version that I used for at my, at my desk when I’m doing videos at the desk. There are also ones from, from alien bee in pro photo and so many that it’s basically the, this is fully powered and there’s lights the light bulb inside to actually do the flash. But for this sake, I want to just show you with this small one.

What you would do now basically what would happen is you would take this and you would stick it in front of your Lens. You wouldn’t even see it. And the beautiful thing is that now the light is coming from in front of the Lens or on the side of the Lens and the Lens is not seeing it at all. So the first way that you can use a ring light is the actual way it’s intended. Putting it on the side of the Lens and letting it illuminates your face. This is the most common use forming light because that’s how it’s intended. The problem with this, which is one of the reasons why I don’t like using it right here, it’s actually one of the reasons why you see the reflection of my light I am using in my glasses, is that glasses pick up pretty much every reflection. Even with anti reflecting coding and depending on how you’re set is and the angles and whatnot, you can get rid of the reflection or sometimes you just can’t.

In this case, I’ve removed it as much as possible with the confinements that I am in now. If you have a ring light, you are basically seeing the ring light around your eyes, in your glasses, in the lenses of your glasses. You’re seeing that pretty much 100 percent of the time no matter what. If you don’t wear glasses, it’s perfect and you get beautiful catch lights in your eyes. The second way to use their green light is to literally use it as a hair light up and out of the way, just like that. If you are firing that light at the back of your subjects head, it’s going to create a nice hair light around your subjects head and not overdo it because ring lights really tend to not overdo light. Again, it very confined to this straight circular shape due to the nature of how these are made.

So if you are putting it as a hairlight, you’re literally getting the light where you place it. Now, if you’re using it as a hairlight, you probably need a good amount of power to get out of here because these are really. Normally I wouldn’t pump up the power through these, but you really can if you want to, so if you’re using it as a hairlight, you might want to bump up the power. The third way that you can use a ring light is actually as a background, you can place it right behind place your subject so their head is sort of in front like so and now typically you want to use a bigger ring light than what this one is. You can place your subject in front of it and then what you would see in the end is a circular illuminated background with black behind it in theory or something really dark behind it.

So for example, my backdrop would just be very dark wood pattern. You’d see then the ring light, which you can gel if you want and you see you can make it a certain color and then your subject in front of it, which you then have to eliminate your subject as well. So you can use this as a background. Now again, I typically don’t use a ring light other than the standard, you know, put it in front of your subject and put your lens through it. And, and that’s about it. And I use that mostly for my video tutorials at the desk for when I record podcast episodes and things like that, so I don’t have a ton of examples to show other ways, but I thought that I would try to inspire you to think outside the box. If you are looking for new things and you have a ring light that you can experiment with, please give it a try, try using as a hairlight, try using it as a background and and just push yourself to your limits and see what you can come up with. By the way, every piece of equipment that I own whenever possible, I get a Mac worldwide extended warranty on and I do that for sort of piece of mind. If I drop it, if I, if I get caught in the rain, it is fully fully covered. They will repair. Replace it as needed. Checkout mack worldwide warranty available at bay. Basically most electronic and camera retailers around the world. If you like this video, click that subscribe button below. Now, I publish new videos every Monday and Thursday whenever possible. You don’t want to miss it.

By Scott

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