Ring light skills

Practise on a teddy

If you’re planning on capturing pets, like our puppy here, it’s a good idea to practise beforehand, so that the lighting, backdrop and exposure are spot on before the chaos of the shoot begins. A teddy bear is ideal, as you can place it in the right spot, perfect your lighting, and even check how the ring light reflects in the eyes.

Simple camera settings

When using always-on ring lights we can set any exposure mode we’re comfortable using, and let the camera meter for the correct exposure. Here we used Manual mode with aperture at f/1.8, shutter speed 1/125 sec and Auto ISO. This way the ISO will adapt to the conditions for us.

Rings for backdrop

You could also use the ring lights to create a halo backdrop by shooting from the other side. Here the dog’s face is lit with the window in the room, while the double rings behind create our unusual background. When the background has strong light like this, we may need to increase our exposure to compensate.

Lens choices

A 50mm prime lens is perfect for this type of portrait, as it offers a wide max aperture so that the backdrop is nicely blurred. But we need to be precise with focusing, as when shooting at a wide aperture, like f/1.8, the depth of field will be a few millimetres at most, so focus precisely on the eyes.

Inexpensive ring lights may not have perfect colour accuracy. It’s best to shoot in Raw format as this gives you greater freedom to correct colour casts after the fact. You can do this in Camera Raw or Lightroom by clicking on a neutral point, like the grey blanket, with the eyedropper tool.

Check the catchlights

Catchlights are the tiny reflected highlights that you’ll see reflected in your subject’s eyes, and ring lights create attractive circular shapes. The distance between subject and light determines the size of the catchlight, so bring it in close to make them larger and move it away to get them smaller.