Illuminate (Ellie)

 A strange experiment. I saw a few images from other artists and I noticed a lot of camera-lighting. You get that almost "headlamp camera" look that Studio does when you leave that light on and your shadows go to heck. So I am like, why do they even have the headlamp camera in the first place other than to keep newer users from having zero success at lighting?

Yep, this is a ring light. The theory is you use a torus, and this one is based off a commercial LED ring lamp model and I setup the parameters for min-max brightness, color temperature, and the other values to match the piece of equipment. These are used in Youtube and selfies (not this side, they usually do 18" versions and not a full meter), and they get rid of harsh shadows and give you an even look to the skin.

I love my colored lights and deep shadows. But I wanted something more than a headlamp light stuck on a camera so I worked this up as a camera preset with the torus light mounted on there and auto-following the camera. One of the benefits of a light like this is you can shoot in a dark room and have a lit figure. You are going to get this flat look, but these lamps are so common that our eyes are used to seeing them and they look natural to us.

An interesting experiment, and another hand-built tool in my box.

-Ren