HomeMadeLight-Macro Photography

I have a screwball idea of rigging 2 or more very small LED lights for lighting macro photography subjects. ( Flowers, etc.) My thought was to get spring clamps with goosenecks- Clamp the thing to my tripod legs and point them at the subject. Could get varying light intensity by multiple bulbs on one, and less light on fill light.

Anybody ever do this? What about color temperature: light intensity?

The bought Lights are priced out of sight, e.g. Canon M-14 runs about 600 bucks.

Help!

Al

The color temperature is a problem, but you can get good results.

I've used a couple underdriven luxeons for close up photography and it's worked nicely.

Daniel

Thanks for the reply. When it comes to underdriven, or anything technical about LED, I'm a dummy.

In the interim, I just ordered from Hongkong two assemblies with 27 LED's. Comes with a head strap to wear while doing other stuff like biking. The face appears to be 50mm, which might give broad enough coverage of the subject field. and you can choose between 3 light, 9 light, and 27 light mode, so I figure you can balance a lower intensity 9 lamper for fill, while using the full 27 for main light, placing at whatever angle for modeling. $22 bucks for the whole thing, including airmail shipping. Maybe it's junk.

I'm hoping the fact of so many lights will give even lighting without hot spots.

Hopefully the color correction is amenable to Photoshop (Elements) adjustment; or with experimentation I can find an appropriate white balance in my digital camera.

What do you think? Am I making sense? Any other ideas?

Thanks.

Al

These might be of interest. I have not tried to build any of these myself yet:

Build Your Own LED Ringlight

LED There be Light - A DIY Bright White Ringlight

Self-Made LED Ringlight for Macro Photography

I use my flashlights a lot for close-up photography. That way I can illuminate
the subject from a lot of directions at once because I have a lot of flashlights.