How to choose a ring lamp: types, features and tips

Make­up artist, blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er. It would seem that such dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sions, but they have one com­mon denom­i­na­tor — the need for a high-qual­i­ty ring lamp. All of them work with visu­al con­tent. To pro­vide your prod­uct with a decent pic­ture, you need to respon­si­bly approach the choice of light­ing. In this arti­cle, I will tell you about what a ring lamp is, what it is for and how to choose the right one.

What is a ring lamp

An annu­lar lamp is a spe­cial device for illu­mi­nat­ing a cer­tain area in the shape of a torus (in sim­ple words, a vol­u­met­ric cir­cle). Such lamps are char­ac­ter­ized by high per­for­mance with min­i­mal ener­gy con­sump­tion. They have built-in LEDs, so even with a pow­er of 4 watts, they give out the same light as con­ven­tion­al lamps with 40 watts. With their help, you can pro­vide your work­space with the prop­er amount of light, as well as lev­el out image defects dur­ing video and pho­to shoot­ing. The device is mount­ed on a spe­cial tri­pod.

Features of ring lamps

1. Elim­i­nate shad­ows.
2. Uni­form dis­tri­b­u­tion of light.
3. Cre­at­ing the effect of “shiny eyes”.
4. Prof­itabil­i­ty.
5. Mobil­i­ty.

Also, many lamp mod­els are equipped with spe­cial pow­er switch­es, with which users can inde­pen­dent­ly adjust the lev­el of light­ing.

Types of ring lamps

There are many clas­si­fi­ca­tions of ring lamps. They dif­fer in pow­er, diam­e­ter, num­ber of LEDs, mount­ing fea­tures and type of light. When choos­ing a ring lamp, you should first of all pay atten­tion to these cri­te­ria.

How­ev­er, there is one key para­me­ter by which all mod­els can be divid­ed into 2 types:

1. Lumi­nes­cent.
2. LED.

The first type of lamps, as a rule, is used to cre­ate addi­tion­al light­ing in the dec­o­ra­tive design of the space: cafes, cre­ative work­shops, clubs, and the like. They can also be used to dec­o­rate the apart­ment. The main advan­tage of flu­o­res­cent lamps over LED lamps is the price. They are much cheap­er. But there are also dis­ad­van­tages, for exam­ple, pow­er. The dif­fer­ence is about 2 times. In addi­tion, such lamps are frag­ile and can break from any mechan­i­cal impact.

Flu­o­res­cent ones are not in great demand among rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mod­ern pro­fes­sions, so we focus on the sec­ond type — LED.

What is important to consider when choosing an LED ring light

— Scope of use

Novice blog­gers, make-up artists, and so on, who main­ly use a mobile phone for pho­tos, should not pur­chase a lamp with a wide diam­e­ter. You can take a minia­ture mod­el that is mount­ed direct­ly above the phone’s cam­era. In addi­tion, it is very con­ve­nient to take it with you to the stu­dio, street or any­where else.

If you need high-qual­i­ty light­ing at a dis­tance, then it is bet­ter to give pref­er­ence to devices with diam­e­ters from 20 to 30 cm with a pow­er of 30 watts. This is quite enough to pro­vide high-qual­i­ty light for a dis­tance of up to 2 meters.

— Power indicators

Ring lamps are divid­ed into 2 cat­e­gories in terms of pow­er:

1. from 35 W for blog­gers and pho­tog­ra­phers;
2. up to 35 W for man­i­cure spe­cial­ists and make­up artists (here is one of the most bud­get options);

For begin­ners in blog­ging, 35 watts is also suit­able, which will allow you to shoot con­ver­sa­tion­al and dance videos at a short dis­tance. There are lamps with a pow­er of 80 W, designed to work with pro­fes­sion­al cam­eras.

How­ev­er, remem­ber that for many lamps you can inde­pen­dent­ly adjust the pow­er. You can take a high-qual­i­ty lamp and, if nec­es­sary, reduce the per­for­mance to the desired effect.

— Diameter

By diam­e­ter, ring lamps are divid­ed into 3 sub­species:

1. Up to 25 cm — mobile lamps that are suit­able for film­ing on the go and with con­stant change of loca­tions.
2. From 25 to 35 cm — ide­al for employ­ees of the beau­ty indus­try.
3. Over 35 cm — uni­ver­sal devices that can solve prob­lems of any com­plex­i­ty.

— Number of LEDs

If you do not work with pro­fes­sion­al pho­to and video equip­ment, then you should not buy a lamp with more than 240 LEDs. For those who need a max­i­mum, 480 LEDs is the best option.

— Light indicators

Here you need to study such a para­me­ter as the col­or ren­der­ing index — this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic that means the prox­im­i­ty of light to day­light. The sun gives out 100 Ra. If you take, say, 80 Ra, then the light will be cold­er and more like white. Lamps with indi­ca­tors of 100 Ra will not be notice­able in pho­tos and videos, and the pic­ture will be as real­is­tic as pos­si­ble.

There is a caveat: not all man­u­fac­tur­ers des­ig­nate this para­me­ter in this way. Many indi­cate the flow rate and oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range. The fol­low­ing indi­ca­tors are con­sid­ered opti­mal: a min­i­mum of 5200 lm of flow inten­si­ty and a range from 2700 to 5600 K.

Hint: The low­er the num­ber in the oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range, the warmer the light. Accord­ing­ly, a high indi­ca­tor gives out cold light.

Also on the mar­ket there are mul­ti-col­ored lamps (RGB), with which you can make cus­tom light­ing using all the col­ors of the rain­bow.

— tripod

Almost all lamps are sold imme­di­ate­ly with a tri­pod. With it, you can adjust the height and posi­tion of the lamp as you like. Tripods also have their own char­ac­ter­is­tics. For exam­ple, make sure that the ends of the legs have rub­ber caps that pre­vent slip­ping on the sur­face. In addi­tion, eval­u­ate the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the design. She should­n’t be squishy.

— Additional options

As I said, many tripods have an inten­si­ty con­trol (called a dim­mer). On some mod­els, it may be pre­sent­ed as a remote con­trol.

What are the brands for ring lamps

I’ve done a lot of research, iden­ti­fied the most in-demand ring light brands on the mar­ket, and high­light­ed their key ben­e­fits just for you.

1. Oki­ra are quite bud­get mod­els with good qual­i­ty, which do not lag behind expen­sive devices in terms of char­ac­ter­is­tics.
2. Zomei — they have good mini lamps with accept­able pow­er.
3. Met­tle is the per­fect build. It looks like it was assem­bled by hand.
4. Led Ring is the leader in terms of addi­tion­al func­tion­al­i­ty.
5. Impul­sar are very durable mod­els that are not afraid of mechan­i­cal dam­age.
6. Ring Fill Light is one of the most pop­u­lar man­u­fac­tur­ers in Rus­sia. They have qual­i­ty lamps for pro­fes­sion­als at fair­ly afford­able prices.
7. LUX — the name speaks for itself. Lux­u­ri­ous lamps, with the best per­for­mance at bit­ing prices. But it’s worth it.
8. Car­o­line — lamps with the longest ser­vice life.
9. QS — there is a spe­cial con­nec­tor for recharg­ing devices.

Summarize

The most impor­tant thing is to deter­mine the pur­pose for which you need a lamp. Based on this, it will be eas­i­er for you to choose the most suit­able mod­el. If you’re shoot­ing nails for Insta­gram, then you don’t have to splurge on a pre­mi­um lamp. Take a device with an aver­age diam­e­ter and pow­er.

Pro­fes­sion­als should take a lamp with a max­i­mum diam­e­ter and a large num­ber of LEDs. Thus, you will be able to sat­is­fy all your requests. Even the pick­i­est ones.

Also think about whether you need addi­tion­al options for the type of dim­mer. Although, I would advise every­one to take lamps with a pow­er switch. Whether it is not enough, when it is use­ful.