Great idea! I’ve been looking into some strobes even though I have plenty of powerful enough speedlights just because I want a modelling light. If I can use this hack, it’ll save me hundreds of dollars!
Thanks, Dawn. I'm glad this has been helpful! Again, you can use more powerful ring lights, headlamps, etc. if you need more light. I was just looking for the best bargain to feature. Good luck!
Nice - I recently started using velcro on an older Falcon Eyes F7 pocket LED (12 watts) and securing it to the top rim of my Godox s2 bracket - bright enough to actually see light fall off patterns as well. Works on a 90cm reflective umbrella and a 36" octa so far. Also thinking of using a tape on cell phone magnet for the setup as well.
Headlamps are definitely a good option as well. I just couldn't find one that was brighter than the ring light without paying significantly more, and the point of the channel is to find the cheapest practical options. A good headlamp will certainly outperform what I picked. Thanks for the comment!
Not really. It's a little complicated. There are a lot of factors involved like what kind of modifier you're using, how the actual speedlight is mounted inside of it, etc. The way the light bounces around inside the modifier plays a large role in the quality of light produced as it exits. The ring light is a soft, unfocused, low intensity light, and it's probably always going to have to be be facing towards your model to be effective since it's only so bright. A Speedlight is a high intensity, focused burst, and it may be facing into the modifier rather than towards the model. For example if you're using a shoot-in umbrella you already can change the quality of that light on your subject depending on how deep the flash is inside the umbrella, how zoomed the head is (or if you're using a bare bulb instead of a Fresnel head), what the power is, etc. The lighting from the ring light is behave much differently, and you would need a much more powerful one than I chose for this dirt-cheap example, to even come close to the output of a tiny speedlight. So You may get a very vague idea of what your light boundaries are if you were using a softbox, dish, or shoot-in umbrella, which actually controls the edge of your light spill, but at the end of the day it'll probably be a poor representation of what you'll see from the flash. And with a shoot-through umbrella or a scrim you don't have any edge control to begin with. The purpose of this hack is to give you just enough light to get your AF to lock if you don't have, or choose not to use an AF-assist feature. I hope this answers your question.
