TinaRawattaPhotography » Austria/Apetlon

As mentioned in an other post, I´m reading http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ and the belonging Flickr-Group. There was a link to a selfmade ringflash with a very small how-to.
I did such a ringflash and here´s the making of.

I have the idea from Tommy Huynh. I did ask him for permission to post the how-to here.

Lets start:

Things you need:
(this list shows the materials I used for it, I guess there are many others that can be used.)

cardboard ca. 2-3mm strong

transluszent foil ca. 1mm strong

silberfoil

a lot of tape ;-)

scissors

I used PVC-hard lightboxfoil, transluzent und Aluminium Grobkornband, which I got from modulor.de.

Step 1
First choose the diameter of the opening in the middle (depends on the bigest diameter of the lens you want to use with it). The thickness of the ringflash will be about 4 cm. Draw the from of the ringflash (front and back) anto the cardboard ant cut it out.
This will be look like this:

The base should have the size of the flash you are using it with.

Step 2
Cut of the ring from one of the pieces you got, but be carefull and do not damage it.

Step 3
Next, use the cut of ring as a pattern for the transluzent foil.
Put the ring onto the foil, draw the outlines and cut it out.

Step 4
I did spray the silverfoil with glue and put the two pieces of cardboard onto it, so that later the light will get more reflected inside of the ringflash.
Cut them out carefully.

Step 5
The transluszent ring will get glued together with the cardboard with some transparent tape.

Step 6
Cut off a stripe from the silverfoil that will built the side of the ringflash and the connection of the two parts.

As you can see I cutted out the stripe a little bit smaller in the middle so that the two parts get more closer at the top of the ringflash.
A second shorter stripe is needed for the middle of the ringflash.

Step 7
With a small scissor I´ve cut the border of the stripes into small teeth.
These teeth get folded 90°, so that i can fix them with some tape to the cardbord

Here you can see these teeth and how I fixed them with the tape

Step 8
Fix the two stripes to one of the pieces. it shoul now look like this:

Step 9
Fix the second piece with some tape, what is a little bit fiddly and will take some time.
The portable ringflash is now finished.

It is not that beautifull, but handmade and full functional.
All you have to do is put it onto your flash, connect the flash with an off-shoe-cord to the cam, put the ringflsh over your lens and have fun using it.

Have fun building your own!