French Brown Photography

A few friends over at NSOP were talking about another DIY Ringlight build – found here. While his build was very good, I still liked my original pastic design better. However, I did like his use of a white, thin, plastic cutting board.

So I decided to scrap my old ringflash and build a better one using the cutting board as a diffuser.

Start with a white plastic bowl, I found mine at a party supply store. Cut circle in bottom. Make tube with white posterboard. Cut fringes on one end of tube so that you can mount the tube to the inside of the bowl with tape (my first one was taped to the outside of the bowl, and the inside looks much better). Cut white cutting board to fit front of bowl. The cutting board has a dull side and a more reflective side, you want to use the reflective side on the inside. I found that the cutting board was so reflective, it reduced my need to put aluminum foil on the inside. Next, attach cutting board diffuser with small zip ties. Cut hole for flash head. I put some electrical tape around the hole so my flash would not be scratched.

I am very happy with this version of the ringflash. It looks very good and the whole thing only weighs 5 oz.

The cutting board provides good, even diffusion of light.

The above videos also convinced me to build a bracket to support the ringflash for one handed operation. I bought and bent a 1/8″ x 3/4″ piece of aluminum so that I could mount it to my camera and the bottom of my OC-E3 off camera cord with 1/4″ thumbscrews.

To use, screw the cord to the bottom of the bracket. Attach flash. Place ring on flash. Place camera lens through ring and screw camera to bracket.

close up picture of bracket

This rignflash in ettl mode provides great even lighting for portraits and macros. This new ringflash provides great round catchlights in eyes. Also, the positioning of the flash allows me to retain the AF assist beam. Currently there are two manufactures of ring attachments for flashes and those sell for $175 and $300. Why waste that money when this was built for well under $10.

My buddy, Daniel Glaser, built me one of his DGO bags for my trip to DC. It was a super stealth messenger style bag that held my camera, 3 lenses plus more.

Ringflashes are great for portraits as they have a nice diffusion of light and create a great round catchlight in the eyes.

I used a large white plastic bowl, posterboard, some tinfoil on the inner ring, a fluorescent light diffuser and some packaging tape.

I made it very big so that it would work with my Sigma 10mm. The flash is fired remotely. Most of these shots were at 1/4 flash power or lower.

For the Beauty Dish, I also used the same bowl with the flash mounted on the back, center. The clear top from a 50CD cakebox fit perfectly in the bowl. Inside the taped in a 3″ blindspot mirror that I got from a car auto parts store.

I recently purchased some ebay flash radio triggers (Cactus or PT-04 style). At the price of $20 for a transmitter and receiver, they seem to be a steal compared to the competitors prices.

However, once they arrived I quickly realized that they do not play nice with my Canon 430EX Speedlight. For some reason the receiver was randomly triggering the flash. These misfires are very annoying.

After some internet research, I found a number of modifications people are doing to these. I picked two relatively easy modifications to try out first.

First I extended the antenna on the receiver (you can also do this on the transmitter). You need right at 6″ of wire as the antenna inside the receiver is just about .98″ long. You solder this wire to the lower spot where the antenna attaches inside the unit. I also cut a notch in the unit so the wire could pass through easily.

Second, I improved on the grounding system inside the receiver. I soldered a small length of wire from the negative battery terminal (* in above picture) to the negative hotshoe terminal (+)

After these changes, I set my channels to 1 ON, 2 ON and I have only had 1 misfire in about 30 flashes or 40 minutes of use.

Lastly, to improve the stability and profile in an umbrella stand, I drilled a second hole in the bracket so that the bracket can sit flush with the unit. This keeps the unit from rotating on the bracket, but you retain that function if you wish.

Hope these simple mods can help you out!