DIY lighting was a bit of a naughty phrase not too long ago. It was almost impossible to actually get the level of power, quality and consistency of lights from companies like Aputure or Godox. But brand name products come with brand name prices.
This isn’t great for beginners with low budgets. But times change, and now inexpensive high CRI LEDs are easy to get hold of elsewhere. Anthony Icuagu at sobrightie decided to take advantage of this fact to make his own DIY light source for making YouTube videos.
Build your own small LED Light for YouTube
Anthony’s build is fairly straightforward, comprising of only a few components. Essentially, it’s just a shiny steel cake tin, a high CRI LED strip, a photo clamp, a light stand, some tinfoil, cardboard and some kind of diffusion material. If you do a bit of shopping around, you can find all this for about $50 or less, especially given that you’ll probably have some of these things at home already.
The build process itself involves lining the inside of the cake tin with the LED strips around its inside curved surface, leaving the base clear. This helps to diffuse the LEDs slightly by bouncing their light around inside the tin before it comes out the front.
The tin is extended with the help of the cardboard, wrapped into a tube and lined with tin foil to make it reflective. This can be as long or as short as you need, depending on the look you’re going for. If you don’t know what you’re going for, experiment with both.
This just needs to be taped onto the cake tin, with the photo clamp attached to it, and then you’re pretty much good to go. But you can extend it even further by creating a diffusion panel and grid to go on the front of it, using more cardboard and whatever you used as your diffusion material.
Is a DIY light source worth it?
LED lighting has come a long way in the last few years. They just keep getting better and better with more features and increased colour accuracy. We’ve even seen innovations such as RGBLAC and BLAIR. But when it comes to just plain white light, high CRI LEDs are now available relatively inexpensively for the masses.
You can even buy high CRI LED strips from Amazon, which is essentially what Anthony’s done in this video. The fact that they’ve become so inexpensive and available now means that building your own light sources for video is a viable option – especially for a small YouTube studio.
Bought vs built has trade-offs on both sides. If you build it yourself, it’s typically much cheaper in terms of financial cost. But that price reduction does still come at an expense. Typically, this means fewer features and no warranty. You may also be limited in power.
Now, Anthony’s build is a fairly small light compared to something like the Aputure Light Dome III ($219). So, it’s not going to be quite as soft as the larger light source, but if you buy the right LEDs, you’ll get the colour accuracy you need. And still, even though it’s not huge, it should still present a softer light than just the bare LED strip.
If you’re on a low budget, don’t be afraid of building your own light sources. They’ll help you to understand how light works, as well as how and why it usually needs to be diffused for best results. Just make sure to check the CRI of whatever LEDs you buy.
[via ISO1200]
