White Angel Eye LED ring for projects

[btfdev]

Hello Team,

Wrote a quick review on these White Angel Eye LED ring.

http://www.binarytaskforce.com/Weblog/2012/04/28/angel-eye/

Must be for some reason they called White Light Car Angel Eye, most likely mimicking the halo ring of the late models BMW headlight. We purchased the rings from Deal Extreme website for the 70mm, 80mm and 90mm version. Got a chance to check them out before the engineers took them.

They are bright and may be useful for various of projects but be aware of quality.



Enjoy, BTFDev

[PedroDaGr8]

Keep an eye of these in heat related situations. In the automotive lighting world they are known to be VERY VERY heat sensitive. You have to derate them pretty heavily to try to keep them alive and even then they often die in a year or so.

[elliott]

Those would make a good cheap DIY ring light for macro photography, just glue it to a step up ring that screws to your lens, add a power source and maybe make a diffuser out of some translucent white plastic like a coffee can lid.

[metalphreak]

Those would make a good cheap DIY ring light for macro photography, just glue it to a step up ring that screws to your lens, add a power source and maybe make a diffuser out of some translucent white plastic like a coffee can lid.

Just ordered a 70mm one and a 58-82mm adapter ring Worth a shot for <$10 in parts 

[elliott]

Those would make a good cheap DIY ring light for macro photography, just glue it to a step up ring that screws to your lens, add a power source and maybe make a diffuser out of some translucent white plastic like a coffee can lid.

Just ordered a 70mm one and a 58-82mm adapter ring Worth a shot for <$10 in parts 

Found one similar on the Pentax forums someone built, little more extreme though:

DIY LED ring light by iamclaus, on Flickr

[M. András]

hmm bought an expensive dslr and the nor cheap objective and built a ring flash for it? or its just a illuminator for macro?

[free_electron]

i just finished building a ring light for such purposes. it uses 36 cree white led's. Driven by a current mode micrel step-up chip and under control of a pic12f639 for brightness control.
4 pushbuttons. on/off , memory , up and down.

i'll post pictures tonight of the final assembly.

[Mechatrommer]

hmm bought an expensive dslr and the nor cheap objective and built a ring flash for it? or its just a illuminator for macro?

ring flash is an illuminator for macro. and yes, it can cost a camera body. so its worth diy if you have a "not so serious need"

[elliott]

hmm bought an expensive dslr and the nor cheap objective and built a ring flash for it? or its just a illuminator for macro?

You should see some DIY macro setups people have come up with, if you're not seriously into it then there is no reason to spend more than $100 on a full macro setup, aside from the camera body.

Reversing rings that let you mount lenses backwards can be had for under $5, this gives you the flat field you need for macro along with some magnification. Get a set of cheap extension tubes for $20 or if you want more flexibility a bellows for around $50. If you don't have a lens capable of controlling the aperture without being mounted to the camera normally, you'll need to pick up something, a $10-20 manual prime from the 70s will work fine and the mount doesn't matter since you're using the filter threads. Add in a $20 DIY ring light or maybe an old manual flash with a DIY softbox on it and you've got a full macro setup capable of amazing shots.

Photography is all about experimentation, would you rather spend $100 on a full setup or $400+ on a dedicated macro lens, $200+ on a real ring light and a few other miscellaneous things just to experiment with macro?


Adult male Paraphidippus aurantius Jumping Spider (With Cannibalism Video!) by Thomas Shahan, on Flickr


Eye Arrangement of a Hogna Wolf Spider by Thomas Shahan, on Flickr

This guy uses a similar setup to what I described, you could replicate his ENTIRE rig for $500, including buying the camera body, since he just used an old K200D.

[Mint.]

hmm bought an expensive dslr and the nor cheap objective and built a ring flash for it? or its just a illuminator for macro?

You should see some DIY macro setups people have come up with, if you're not seriously into it then there is no reason to spend more than $100 on a full macro setup, aside from the camera body.

Reversing rings that let you mount lenses backwards can be had for under $5, this gives you the flat field you need for macro along with some magnification. Get a set of cheap extension tubes for $20 or if you want more flexibility a bellows for around $50. If you don't have a lens capable of controlling the aperture without being mounted to the camera normally, you'll need to pick up something, a $10-20 manual prime from the 70s will work fine and the mount doesn't matter since you're using the filter threads. Add in a $20 DIY ring light or maybe an old manual flash with a DIY softbox on it and you've got a full macro setup capable of amazing shots.

Photography is all about experimentation, would you rather spend $100 on a full setup or $400+ on a dedicated macro lens, $200+ on a real ring light and a few other miscellaneous things just to experiment with macro?


Adult male Paraphidippus aurantius Jumping Spider (With Cannibalism Video!) by Thomas Shahan, on Flickr


Eye Arrangement of a Hogna Wolf Spider by Thomas Shahan, on Flickr

This guy uses a similar setup to what I described, you could replicate his ENTIRE rig for $500, including buying the camera body, since he just used an old K200D.

I hate spiders.

[M. András]

they look amazing  you will never be that close to one unless you see these pics with such a detail

[metalphreak]

Going to make a custom (read: longer) cable for it. Lucky I have some of those tiny connectors spare from another project

Step 1: Drill a 5mm hole someone in the ring to pass the cable and socket through.

Step 2: Cover all the resistors on the back with kapton tape to insulate them from the filter ring.

Step 3: Stick it down with double sided foam tape

Step 4: fill in the hole on the back with liquid electrical tape, hot glue, potting compound, etc. This protects the power solder points and the wire from being damaged by the metal edge of the hole.