A ring light is so 2017! Everyone has it, and it makes you look like a husky. How about a logo light?
First I need my logo on a piece of plywood. I simply printed it out on 6 sheets of paper. But marking would have worked in the same way. How big? This depends on the desired distance, but it can’t hurt to make it really big. My logo is approx. 60x 80 cm in size, and in the opening credits I am only one arm’s length away from it. I stick my sheets together and add the missing bits of the contour on the margins. Then I cut out the logo. I stick it to the plywood board with a glue stick.
Now an LED strip is used. When you buy an led strip for photography or video purposes, look for a high CRI value (color rendering index). It should be 80 or above.
If you are going to use it alongside other lighting equipment, I would suggest that you match the color temperature. I use 4000k for all my lights.
Compare these LED-Strips:
Aliexpress.com*
ebay.com*
ebay.de*
amazon.de*
amazon.com*
There are special bendable LED strips, but normal strips can also be guided around curves if you fold them a little.
The LED strips can be cut at the marks – with particularly beautiful scissors. I try to cover the logo as evenly as possible with the LED strips. The direction doesn’t matter.
There are soldering points on the LED strips at regular intervals. All strips are connected in parallel. It doesn’t matter where, as long as it’s plus to plus and minus to minus. To connect several pieces with one cable, I like to cut only the insulation. Then pull the insulation apart a little so that the bare copper is exposed and I can solder it on. Maybe I should have been more careful about the polarity though.
After everything is connected, I secure the LED strips with hot glue, I don’t really trust the adhesive layer of the strip.
Now I need cardboard strips with a width of approx. 3.5mm. It doesn’t really matter, but it helps when they are straight and all the same width. I just took a strip of wood as a measure.
Now may be a good time to saw out the hole through which the camera is supposed to look later.
Now I glue the cardboard strips along the whole contour of the logo.
So that the individual LEDs are no longer visible, we need a diffuser. I use tracing paper. This is glued to the edge of the cardboard contours with hot glue.
Now I build a simple bracket.
The connecting plate is screwed between camera and tripod quick mount plate.
And the plywood with the logo is glued on with plenty of hot glue. I can’t screw it on, I should have done that before gluing on the tracing paper.
The result works just as a ring light, only that the camera picks up the reflection of the logo instead of a boring old ring. Try it out!
