Let there be light!

For a while, light has been an issue

Meaning, taking a picture of an artwork that my daughter created was doable if you don't want to see the cool colors she used as they are in the drawing. The same goes for my own drawings, I've been working on a mandala drawing for quite some time now, many many hours have been put in it, and as I draw mostly during the evening, most of the process pictures just suck. I can't skip capturing the process until the next day as clearly, that means I have to stop drawing too. During the summer months, I often went outside on the terrace to take pictures for the foods posts, not ideal, but it worked. Now that fall is around the corner, this is not an option anymore as the rainy days will be here more often.

Sometimes the solution is so simple

I just never actually took the time to see if the solution was expensive or not to see if I could make it happen. I just dealt with it as it was, which took long enough if you ask me. Time for a change. For starters, I bought myself an easel to place the artworks on for the pictures instead of having to put them down on a table, the angle just doesn't work well. Second, and probably most important, I bought a ring light on a tripod yesterday so that I finally can capture things as they are without having to go outside hoping for a clear sky.

Package deal only

I was only looking for the ring as I already had a tripod, but every seller was only offering them as a package including a tripod. I may be happy about this later, if I ever decide that I will film something using my normal camera instead of my phone, so that I can use both of them. This ring light has a holder for a phone, but I'm not too confident it will hold my camera as well, so I'd not feel comfortable trying (and then finding out it's too heavy).

Everything is very simple to assemble, just some screws and slide the tripod to make it bigger or smaller. The ring can face downwards as well. I decided to test it without my phone in it, so I removed the phone holder.

Time to test it

I can't test it with my easel yet, so I will test how my mandala drawing looks on a table using the light. Usually when I have to take pictures of items on the table I had to place a big white paper under it to have the best effect. I will try taking a picture without it now and hopefully see a huge difference.

When using our home lightening (or the softened light in this ring, it's quite similar, to be honest) this is how my process pictures turn out:

I'm of course hoping for better light when I use the bright white light in this ring so that I'm finally able to capture drawings as they are. These are taken using the brightest light in the ring:

Although I still hate taking pictures from this angle, I see a huge improvement even with this simple bright light compared to the usual light. Therefore, I'm happy that I bought this light for about 15 bucks. I could have ordered it online for much lower prices, but then I could not check the quality (and I've seen a lot of different ones yesterday asking the same price) and I just don't like that with some items. I know they often use an original item's picture, copy it, and then when your package arrives, it's so disappointing. For professional photography, this light would probably not be bright enough, but for the things I use it for, it's good enough so it seems.

I love it when a solution is just around the corner :)

Posted with STEMGeeks