Additionally, if you use focus stacking technique you will need to have a constant source of colour balanced light. A speedlight or strobe is out of the question in such a situation. A small ring light is the best solution for ensuring a proper exposure. That may and often blocks the ambient light. When working with a small focal length lens you must move in closer to the subject in order to fill the frame. In both product and macro photography you work with a macro lens and get in close to the subject in order to produce an image that fills the frame. But beyond that ring lights are useful for product photography and macro photography as well. They are primarily used for capturing those beautiful catchlights on the eyes of a model. Ring lights are best utilised for the purpose of shooting portraits. The smaller 9” LED Photography Video Studio Lighting Kit – 2x ‘Duo’ Crystal Luxe is more useful for a small studio or home-studio.
#SMALL LED PANEL PROFESSIONAL#
If you are looking for a decent continuous lighting kit for your home studio or professional setup you can look at the ' Illuminate Wand Max' 33" Vlogger & Photography Home Studio LED Light Kit.
LED panel lights are also very popular as continuous lights for shooting videos. You can use a ring light for shooting product photography, for vlogging (as a continuous light) and so on. That said, even ring lights can be used for purposes other than portrait photography. LED panel lights are a proper key light for portrait and other types of photography. This can add a lot of value to your portrait photos. And second, where it is not the key light but the catchlight.Ĭatchlight produces that beautiful reflection of the source of the key light on the eyes of the subject. First as the key light illuminating the face of the model. If you are a portrait photographer, this light can serve dual purposes. Therefore, the shape of the light they produce is circular. Ring lights are a continuous smooth light that is shaped as a circle. What differentiates them are the shape of the lights and the panel design. To reiterate ring lights and LED Lights are essentially the same. Allowing you to seamlessly mix the light with natural sunlight or allowing you to adjust it with the ambient light colour temperature inside a room. Just like the ring lights we read about above, LED panel lights also come with the option to change the colour temperature. Usually, the higher number of LEDs, the higher price of the unit. Additionally, the number of LEDs on any LED panel lighting system can vary. This base could be rectangular or square and depending on the specific purpose or utility of that panel lighting systems. The term LED panel lights denote an array of LED lights setup on a panel type base.
You can adjust the colour temperature to mimic the sun’s light and or use it to compliment the sun to produce an image that appears shot entirely with natural light. And this is a huge advantage when shooting outdoors. Most professional units, such as the Spectrum Aurora 18” Diamond Luxe III Ring light are battery operated. This is useful when you are working in a multi-light setup and or when you need to adjust the colour of your key-light with that of the ambient light in the room. A brilliant feature that allows you to match the colour of the light with the others in the studio. The top-of-the-line ring lights such as the Spectrum Aurora 19” Gold Luxe II Ring light come with a colour temperature adjustment knob.
Ring lights are shaped like a ring and that shape allows the light to uniformly light a face, usually from a straight-on angle. Photographers love them, and so do models.īut what is so special about them? The shape. The ideal kind of light that would produce flattering facial portraits of models wearing cosmetics or jewellery. They are the best when it comes to shooting beauty shots. The most obvious thing about ring lights is that they are shaped like a, well, a ring. Portrait photography, e.g., is an extremely popular genre and is one of the key areas where both these types of lights are used. Photography as a term encompasses several different genres and sub-genres. The only thing that is different is the shape. Incidentally, both ring lights and LED lights are basically the same thing – they are both LED lights. They are actually not two different genres of lighting but two different approaches to lighting depending on the kind of photography that you do.