Why Every Blogger Needs A Selfie Ring Light In Their Kit

Ring lights are a big love-hate thing in the world of photography. A ring light can make your subject pop” and does not wash out or change the contours of the face in a way that uneven lighting would, making it the perfect lighting tool for portraits and selfies. For example, if you're shooting at sunset, the light that bounces off the reflector will have that same orange hue.

To side light a small product, you're going to need a large table, a continuous or strobe light, an umbrella, foam boards, and a roll of seamless white paper. Whatever bulb you select, set your camera's white balance accordingly and use a grey card to ensure your colors are captured as accurately as possible.

The circular light creates an attractive shadowy halo on the subject and acts as a fill light to soften shadows when used as a secondary light source. No foam board this time because we've got two lights and they're going to be diffused by the umbrellas. Fashion and portrait photography were the main users of these meters, working with complex lighting systems.

Learn and grow with full access to ALL of our comprehensive, industry-leading education, systems, and tools - developed by Pye Jirsa of Lin and Jirsa Photography, one of the most successful photography studios in the world. Reflectors can be used to help bounce the light back towards the subject, softening harsh shadows.

You'll know that a model is facing a ring light by the appearance of circular catch lights (or eye lights) in the subject's eyes. These devices maintain any through-the-lens (TTL) lighting functions that are shared by the camera and flash because the timing of the light has not changed.

As electronic flash units became more sophisticated, nature photographers began to use them to gain enough light to increase magnification and enable smaller apertures, with resulting added depth of field; that is, more light makes it possible to get more of the subject in focus.

It's no wonder then that lighting is what actually makes a good photo great. The last piece of the photography puzzle is to edit your images. Front light is when the light source is illuminating the subject from the front. Natural lighting can change in an instant if the sun decides to hide behind clouds, and for video this can be a big issue as lighting changes from shot to shot.

That's not to say the camera doesn't make a difference — a top Rmit Sharma of the range DSLR is capable of taking better photos than a phone. However, some people relish the extra color saturation and sparkle provided by evenly exposing both sides of the product, so keep your strobes set to even powers if even light is more your style.

There are thousands of different studio lights on the market, but only the best offer features that make the light setup process easier and faster. On the right, the Flash Ring Adapter has smoothed out those shadows by delivering light from (almost) every direction.

A few have battery packs contained right in the same unit as the bulbs, and one type of lens developed for medical photography even has the ring lighting built into the lens, but these are less common than flashes with hot shoe connectors or battery packs.