The essence of photography is to utilise a camera to control light and time for a mere instant. Modelling lighting in this way is much easier in a studio environment, but you can apply the concepts here to outdoor shoots as well One of these is the impact on a subject’s natural habitat caused by shadows thrown by foliage. When you need to get down low in a setting that has lots of bushes, tall grass and other foliage, you are likely to have trouble gaining enough natural light. In addition, due to the small scale of the subjects, you yourself may also be a blocker of light and cause a considerable shadow to fall across your composition. With macro photography, you are likely to shoot with a faster shutter speed to capture your subjects for the brief moment they are still. The challenge when shooting with a 1:1 ratio macro lens is that your working depth of field is incredibly fine. This is exacerbated by the close quarters of macro work, to the point where shooting wide open essentially blurs out almost your entire image.
Shooting with a shallow aperture in macro is an easy way to have your subject be out of focus
As you can see, the general shutter speed and aperture settings conducive to most macro shooting mean that your camera will capture less light. More importantly, sunlight and shafts of light can play an essential role in making your image dramatic. The positioning of the sun relative to your subject is a major consideration when shooting with natural light
Some ring flashes feature a pair of small illumination lamps that assist with focusing on your subject. They are simple and easy to work with, although they don’t always add as much extra light to the image as other flash solutions.
This ring flash also features a pair of lamps that illuminate your subject and help to capture focus, especially in very low light settings.
One essential to keep in mind is that this kind of ring light can produce light-rings in the eyes of insects.
With more experience and practice, the move to this kind of set-up makes sense to those that want to elevate their output. Shadows can add depth and drama to a composition and by lifting them too much your subject separation will suffer.
Another approach to lighting your macro composition is to employ a standard flash unit. Using a diffuser or bounce card to avoid the harsh shadows visible in this image Imagine the head of the flash pointing upwards, and the bounce card angled at around 45 degrees. The MagMod MagBounce is a popular and flexible flash bounce, although you’ll need the MagGrip accessory that comes in the starter package. This kind of flash is a suitable size for macro photography in either a studio setting or out in the field. Equally, it is an excellent opportunity to learn about how your camera uses time and light to capture an image.
Shooting in a studio environment (and with a static subject) affords you the ability to be much more specific with your lighting Thankfully, as you progress in your skills and capabilities, there are options available to you to step-up your image output.
7 Creative Ways to Use A Ring Flash
However if you want to use one the lights they use on high-end fashion shots, be prepared to say good bye to a couple of Big Ones. The oddly shaped – around the lens – modifier, combined with lots of lighting power does not come cheap.
Luckily new, easy on the pocket, rings lights like the Orbis ($200) and the DIY Ring Flash ($25) provide access to this wonderful tool to the budget minded photographer as long as they own a small hot shoe strobe. The most common use for a small ring flash is to use it to create a subtle fill light.
David Hobby A.K.A Strobist came up with one of the coolest and interesting ways to use a ring flash. Then he uses a ring flash as fill to add details to the final photograph.
Note the halo of shadow originating around the model as the light hits her exactly from the lens center. If you opt to photograph the small things, a ring flash is your perfect companion.
Lastly, you can forget the fact that this is a ring flash at all and simply use it off camera and off axis as a small softbox. Udi Tirosh runs DIYPhotography, and makes great photography products.
Best ring light for making videos at home
The DRL 12 can be adjusted in many angles which makes it a good fit for vlogging, live streaming and clicking face-centric pictures. The 220 LED bulbs in the form of a ring produce an ample amount of light to improve the brightness of your video. The Osaka LED ring light is a suitable option for shooting video even in low-lit areas. It features an angle-adjusting handle that makes it easier to shoot videos in different frames.
Venganza ring light is a viable choice for content creators who looking to reduce the shadow and have a blemish-free appearance. The big 10-inch LED ring light comes at an affordable price and promises to have good results.
Ring lights are used to reduce the shadow and to put the focus on the subject.
Godox MF12 Macro Ring Light System Review
It opens up a whole new world of details that the naked eye simply can’t see, and the resulting images are often ones that delight viewers. Add to this the challenge that sometimes your equipment gets so close to the subject that it actually shadows it, effectively removing even more light. Many macro photographers find the simplest and best solution is to introduce more light to the subject, but this can get expensive. Enter Godox, a company that has built a great reputation for developing quality lighting at a reasonable price.
Each unit has a guide number of 16, and the built-in lithium battery gives you up to 500 full power flashes before needing a recharge. I liked the fact that they also have a built-in modeling light, which further extends the usefulness of the units when working in a very dim environment. I was particularly impressed when shooting the product shots I show in this series, as it can be easy for those to get blown out by lighting that’s not correctly controlled. Some people have complained about the bracket mounting system on the ring and that the units don’t stay in the right spot, but I couldn’t recreate that issue myself.
I did find that the white balance of my shots tended towards the warmer side, though that’s easy to fix in post. Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming.
I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier.
Bolt VM-110 LED Macro Ring Light Review
It’s been bugging me that I only have a handful of decent insect photos, despite owning a macro lens primarily for that purpose. When they weren’t flying or running away from me, they were biting me, and when I tried the pop-them-in-the-fridge-to-cool-them-down trick – well, let’s just say Mr. Tarantula is still napping. I felt awful about that and vowed never to ice down a critter again unless it was a penguin with heat stroke.
The flash mode is more a feature to conserve battery life and not constantly blind your subjects. When I first tried the VM-110 it immediately became obvious that this is a poor choice for shooting bugs or any moving subjects. Your shutter speed needs to be ½ sec or longer for this ring light to take advantage of the specified GN.
In practice I found the VM-110 beat this, but still I had to shoot at ISO 2500 to get proper exposure at one foot distance and 1/125 and f/16. Furthermore, its all-plastic build keeps the weight and cost down but makes it feel a bit like a toy.
These are plastic too, with the potential to cross-thread the rings or have them jam tight and be hard to remove – treat these very gingerly if you want them to last and don’t over-tighten them. Instead of bashing this product for not being good for bugs, I set out to find some fun static subjects to shoot.
I heard there’s decent money to be had in product photography so I grabbed my tripod and let the magic happen. I snuck this pic of what I think is the camera modulara prototype sitting on a light table at Mansurov Enterprises.
The only communication with the camera is the ability for the shutter to trip the ½ sec flash mode. But seriously, the ring lit portrait can be a cool trendy look with punchy highlights and dark shadowy rims on the subject and even a background halo (assuming no other light source).
Quickly I learned why ring lights suck for portraits – having the flash mounted on the lens really blinds your model. Switching from 50mm to 60mm lens, taking a step back and adding some ambient light helped.
I had to go back in and tweak both temperature and tint (using Lightroom’s WB picker tool) to get something resembling healthy skin. If you choose to use this ring light to illuminate humans, I suggest creating some LR presets for WB and sticking with the clear diffuser. Another portrait trick you might recognize from the fashion mags is the ring-shaped catchlight in the model’s eyes. As a constant light source, the VM-110 might be handy for close-up video work, but I haven’t tested this yet. With a 24-120mm on a full frame sensor I had vignetting through the entire range, but of course more severe at the wider focal lengths. Good news there, now if I can just get that darned plastic adapter ring off (yeah I mentioned this before, but these really need to be made of metal). On the plus side it’s inexpensive, lightweight, gives even illumination, and as a constant light source, WYSIWYG. Its biggest downsides are how weak it is, the funky white balance issues, and the long “flash” duration.
Bolt VM-160 Macro Ring Light REVIEW
I’ve been able to gather many types of accessories for my camera, but lighting has been one thing that’s been difficult for me to add into my kit. Four clip-on diffusers are included — clear, frosted, amber, and blue. It will attach to your camera using an accessory shoe and requires 4 AA batteries.
Inside the box, you will find light, the diffuser panels, and the power adapter.
As it turns out, the ring light was just the thing I needed to make awesome portraits and close-up product shots. For my product shots, I typically use a lit white box, but sometimes I need just a bit more light up front.
I also like to take products around my office and on location to shoot some nice lifestyle shots. I don’t think you’ll find a better bargain when it comes to effect lighting for a DSLR.
Handheld Macro Photography with the Bolt VM-160 Ring Light
The shopping list will probably start with a dedicated macro lens capable of life size (1:1) reproduction, because while cheaper zoom lenses and wide-angle primes might show a “macro” region on their focus scale, these lenses typically render their subject no larger than 25% of their real world size. And while photographers of all sorts can benefit from owning a durable tripod, those who are macro obsessed might consider upgrading their tripod’s head to a geared unit that will permit very fine adjustments in three axes, as well as a macro focusing rail that moves the entire camera toward/away from the subject without changing the focal point (and therefore, the magnification power) of the lens.
If you had spent a few hundred dollars on your tripod rig, it would be no problem at all to dial in your framing with total precision and simply increase your exposure time with no fear of tiny perturbations in your setup ruining the image. The obvious benefit of using one of these lights is that you drastically reduce the shutter time necessary for a good exposure, thus permitting a much sharper image. But in addition to sharper focus, having such direct light allows for the colors of your subject to pop with a vibrancy that longer exposures can’t guarantee. Already, the Bolt unit shows a lot of promise as a device that lets you be creative in the field, allowing you to approach macro photography with spontaneity and—perhaps—let you turn your brain off and better enjoy taking pictures.
I was delighted to find that the Bolt VM-160 LED Ring Light allows you to illuminate your subject to the exclusion of background elements, giving the impression that it is emerging from nothing—anti-bokeh? I’m hardly a portrait photographer, and am pathologically introverted to boot, so the past few months with the Bolt were spent agonizing over how I was going to source folks willing to let me test the device on them in the middle of a pandemic after moving to a strange town.
But thanks to an infographic that was widely circulating around Halloween time, which revealed that the original Addam’s Family set was awash in cheery pinks and yellows, I recalled the impact that color has on different types of black and white films.
While the Bolt VM-160 LED Ring Light kit is highly versatile—having allowed me to take photographs I would never have imagined before—the execution of the product leaves a little to be desired. But of course, the plasticky build quality of this light makes this point about battery life sometimes moot, as the door securing the AAs in place doesn’t always seal tight enough to keep the electrical contacts stable. Despite these gripes, with its gentle pricing and compatibility with lenses of various sizes, the Bolt VM-160 LED Ring Light is an excellent tool for anyone casually interested in macro photography and hoping to make better pictures without too much investment.
I am not always the most gentle with my gear, but I feel confident enough to keep it packed up in my kit along with the adapters for my macro and portrait lenses, as it is the quickest and simplest way for me to spontaneously capture tiny things.
The Best Ring Light and Macro Flashes of 2021
Whether you’re launching your own YouTube channel or just trying to improve your portrait photography, a ring light is a great way to get professional-looking results with minimal expense. They’re especially easy for beginners to use because they provide an even illumination around your subject (so there are no tricky shadows to work around), and they’re a constant light source, so you can easily see how your final shot will look.
Kraken Sports Weefine Ring Light Review
Within these two categories there are numerous choices ranging from budget friendly to professional caliber lighting systems. There have been several new lighting systems coming to the market over the past few years that allow photographers and videographers to expand their arsenal of tools to create new and unique images. Ring lighting is nothing new, and in fact they have been quite popular in beauty and fashion photography for many years, so it was only a matter of time before these systems ended up going underwater. The battery compartment is sealed with dual o-rings, and there was spare set that shipped with the unit. My personal preference is in favor of rechargeables and to stay away from alkaline batteries, as they do nothing but end up in a landfill. Once it is mounted, the entire unit can spin freely, which can be useful in the event you need to get the battery holder out of the way of any obstacles. Although the system does not produce a very large amount of light, for the purposes of macro images where the subject is so close to the lens, the 1000 lumens do their job well. In my testing, I did have to keep the light set to full power, as anything below 100% began to limit the distance I could get from the subject while still providing adequate exposure values. There is certainly no limit to the potential creative uses this light will afford an underwater macro photographer. I have reached a point where I am not really looking to add any new gadgets to my kit, as I want to avoid the weight and maintenance, let alone the cost.
The Kraken Weefine ring light on the other hand is neither heavy or expensive, and should require nearly no maintenance other than rinsing it after a dive. In my opinion this would be a great additional tool to purchase and carry in the camera bag….I know one is going in mine as soon as my order arrives.
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