Check out the picture above. Pretty cool, huh? Well, to make photos like this you can use a special technique. It wasn’t invented by me, but by a Bay Area photographer named Scott Jarvie. It’s a pretty eye catching way to take portrait photos, and here’s an introduction to how it’s done.
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The “flash units” found on the backs of smartphones may be getting more powerful, but the general idea has largely remained the same: use a powerful LED light that can illuminate a scene when you need a little extra light. The power output doesn’t really stack up to the flashes found on compact cameras, but Google has one solution for making the flash a bit brighter.

In a recently published patent, the company outlines the idea of placing multiple LED flashes on smartphones, perhaps in a ring around the camera unit.
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We’ve seen ring flash units that redirect light from a DSLR’s pop-up camera and a hot shoe-mounted flash, but never from a compact camera’s built-in flash. Based on a patent filing published earlier this month and uncovered by Egami, that’s what Nikon appears to be in the process of building.
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Okay — maybe it’s trying to reinvent the wheel, er, ring flash, but this could be an interesting gadget: Chinese company CononMark has unveiled a flash system that looks like a cross between a ring flash, speedlights, bracket flash and modeling lights.
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If you’ve ever wondered when, or how, or why you might use a ring light or ring flash, this short lighting tutorial from The Slanted Lens should help you answer all of those questions. In this case, Jay P. Morgan was shooting for Zombie Juice soda and he took the opportunity to explain why he chose to use a ring flash, some of the disadvantages of ring flashes, and how he supplemented it to get the perfect shot.

Understanding Ring Lights / Ring Flashes: A Lighting Tutorial (via ISO1200)

The RoundFlash is a new ring flash adapter that’s lightweight and collapsible. Setting it up from its collapsed state is similar to setting up a tent: simply take the rods and stick them into the holes to expand the adapter.
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Videographer Joel Loukus created a continuous ring light source — which he calls the “WreathLight” — using a wreath frame and two strings of Christmas lights. The total cost came out to $24. It’s a cheap and easy way of adding some soft lighting to your portraits.
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No, this isn’t some advanced beam weapon from a sci-fi flick. It’s actually a do-it-yourself ring flash created using 150 optical fibers, with one end wrapped over the pop-up flash of the DSLR and the other end spitting out the photons in a ring-shape. If you want to learn how to make your own, here’s an in-depth writeup on how this was constructed.

Photojojo has a new ring flash adapter that allows you to shoot soft, studio-style portraits without shelling out the big bucks for an actual ring flash. It’s a plastic add-on with a reflective circle that simply channels the light from your existing flash, so it doesn’t require any batteries.
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I have always been enthralled ring flashes, but they are so expensive! I recently found a pizza box ring flash how to, but it didn’t go on my camera (it was meant as an off camera ring flash) so I made some changes. And here, for all to use, is my version of the pizza box ring flash.
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