Over a year ago, 10th July 2009 to be exact, I built my own ring flash light modifier! One can either stick a lens of 77mm diameter through the hole, or turn the modifier upside-down to become a directional light, looking very much like a beauty dish.

This is how it looks, straight on, through the ring.

Enche Ted the lighting guru with the directional light.

Muzzammil against the wall.

Muzzammil not against the wall. I have to say I really like the directional light mode!

Waifon through the ring.

smashpOp with a light from the side.

Isz, camera salesman, through the ring…

…and Rames with that beauty dish-like effect.

How about some macro?

This was a far more difficult shot (thanks Kevin Wong for taking this!) Two flashes with wide-panel diffusers pulled out, and one flash with ring flash light modifier from above.

My inspiration to build this came from another lighting modifier master, Templar! His far more refined version is on the right. Trust an engineer to make precision look easy!

There was, also, this O-Flash RF175 light modifier – it was significantly heavier, but gives one stop better light transmission. Did I mention that the light modifier sucks power and decreases range significantly?

The bottom left picture with with the O-Flash; the bottom right, with my version, which had a warm cast.

Version 2, built on the 1st of August 2009, transforms and holds a Sony HVL-F58AM flash. However I’d rather lug around the Version 1 because the collapsed Version 2 doesn’t fit in much smaller bags.

Someday when I am freer, I shall revise this into an even smaller design, I hope. It would be too easy to make a collapsible beauty dish – but ring flash?

Left is Version 2 next to a Metz Mecablitz 15 MS-1 Digital. Powered by 2 AAA batteries, that ring flash amazingly packs a punch – it can even be triggered by your camera’s pop-up flash! Now, if only it would fit lenses having a filter thread size bigger than 72mm… (though, you’d want to stick a medium telephoto through this, so you’d probably zoom your lens through it.)

More pictures from the same setup: (and some are the same but in lower resolution…)
Lucky 8