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Ring lighting in portraiture

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
A while ago I acquired a Rayflash ringlight adapter, distributed by Expoimaging (the makers of the ExpoDisc measurement diffuser). The unit mounts to the head of an on-camera flash unit (mine is intended for use with my Canon Speedlite 580EX II) and produces a ring light source, coaxial with the lens axis (if you can overcome some sag tendencies), with an outside diameter of about 7" and an inside diameter of about 4". It is, by the way, very well made and easy to use.

I looked forward to using this rig for candid portraits, hoping that the wide and central light source would illuminate shadowing.

That it did. But I quickly discovered that in the shots taken with this as the primary light source, the skin of the models almost always had a wholly uninteresting "plastic-y" appearance.

I'd be interested in the observations of any others here who have used ring lighting in a portrait context.

Best regards,

Doug
 
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