Cookie Can Ring Light

At my company we eat a lot of cookies (especially me). So over time we had quite a few empty cookie cans, which we always ended up throwing away. So I decided to put them to better uses. One of those I am going to show you in this instructable: Building a ring light for your camera.

I always wanted a ring light, but commercial one are quite expensive. The advantages of using a lid instead of for example a piece of wood or acrylic is that the lids are very light and due to the border a female connector can be easily added.

Stuff you need:

• led ring (there are a lot of different ones available. I managed to get one with a diameter of 15 cm on ebay for less than 10 €)*
• dimmer (e.g. here)
• adapter ring (e.g. here)
• one or multiple step down rings, depending on the lens sizes you would like to use (e.g. here)
• power adapter
• female power connector
• black spray paint
• glue (a strong one and hot glue)
• drills, depending on the size of the adapter ring and the female power connector you want to use

* If you can't find one, there are a few instructables on how to make one yourself, e.g. here.

First you will have to find the centre of the lid. Draw a line somewhere along the brim. Find the centre and draw a perpendiclar line through the middle. Repeat the process, as shown in the second picture.

Where the two perpendicular lines cross is your centre. Place a piece of wood under the lid and clamp it firmly in place. Drilling works even better, if you add another thin one on top.

Next you will have to drill a hole for the female connector. As you can see I had to use a different lid, because the first time I tried to drill the hole I messed up. Make sure to hold the lid in place with some clamps to prevent messing up.

Once you have drilled the hole, use a file to make sure that the edges are smooth. Don't worry about messing up the paint job since we are going to spray paint the lid.

As you can see in the first picture, I forgot that you need to drill a hole for the cables to go to the back. So I had to drill it after I had already spray painted the lid. You should definitely first drill the hole and then spray paint the lid.

Next glue the led ring to the front of the lid and put the wires through the hole. Screw the female power connector into the other hole you drilled and connect the cables. Make sure to get the polarity right and use some hot glue to insulate the cables.

Now all that is left to do is to glue the adapter ring in place. First make sure that the plug will face down later on, by screwing the adapter to your camera and marking the direction it is facing.

Use some strong glue to glue the ring to the front of the lid.

The dimmer can simply be plugged into the adapter.

Congratulations, you are done.