Eye Photography With Ring Light? Help

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caitlinjade95

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caitlin
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I really want to start a little project with myself. I am a huge fan of make up - considering I'm a make up blogger I should be haha! Specifically eye make up and I love seeing photos like the one posted on the link below but no matter what I do, no matter what lighting conditions wether I use flash, natural light, soft boxes etc I cannot get the effects that is in this photo. I can quite clearly see from the photo that she is using a ring light. Is that the significant difference between the two examples of my eye vs the one on the link?

I have tried with the 50mm 1.8 but it was much softer then when I used my 24-70mm which is what I have used in the photo example. I just want a fun project to give myself some inspiration and have some fun with it but my killer question is, is the ring light the huge factor in the photo is it making the massive difference between the same photos. (I also know the girl who has taken the photo via instagram and she uses a 24-105mm lens and the same camera canon 600d as me.

HERS: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c2/75/e2/c275e20466276628980f1ee6bbdd2900.jpg
MINE: View: https://www.instagram.com/p/BBNJ5A4Bn42/?taken-by=tt_mirror
 
Composition is better on hers (border spacing to the left and right of eyebrow, rule of thirds on eyebrow and eye), your photo is soft and overly compressed (which means you see less of the skin texture while it's obvious on hers throughout), your photo looks like a warmer colour temperature.

Someone feel free to correct me but I don't believe the ring light is making a great deal of difference, you'd only use one if you wanted the catchlight or to reduce/eliminate shadows.
 
Thats what I thought but she said it's increased her clarity 100% but I was just unsure. I know that there is so many things wrong with my photo, I just wanted to take one using my best efforts with what I have so show the difference to see if anyone else can enlighten my question on here. I even used the same settings she does just to trail it and see. I also used a 100 iso f5.6 and 1/125 ss and thats the same settings she uses.

Thankyou for your imput!
 
A lot of people get hung up on using the exact same settings as they see in another photo, but unless the light is the same then the settings may not produce the same look.
Are you sure it's a ring light? In my experience the catch light from a ring light is a perfect circle whereas that looks more like a strip or soft box left and right and one underneath uplighting. Very similar to how Peter Hurley uses his Kino Flo's where he almost wras he subject in lights (they're continuous though)
I think the biggest difference is the level of post that photo has been through, almost looks like it's been through something like Portrait Pro.
The ring light will give you a fairly flat light as its straight on and there's a difference in facial compression the bigger the zoom due to the way the lenses work which might explain why you have a slightly different perspective on the eye if she's shooting closer to 105mm
 
sunnyside_up said:
I believe there's also been a lot of post work on that as well...
Click to expand...
This.
It looks to have had a technique called Frequency separation used on it which allows the skin to be blurred whilst retaining texture, I use the same technique my self.

I have a ring light and it does give even illumination, better than anything I can acheive with flash on close ups I do for my mua.
 
Yes, so much post work is seen on the images like this on instagram, I'm yet to find someone who doesn't edit the hell out of the photo on the accounts I follow haha!

It's the difference in lighting/sharpness/detaling that I just couldn't get my head around with the difference etc. Hmmm I have seen alot of people who take photos like that rave to high heaven about ring lights but I just cannot get my head around how there is a major difference haha!

Thanks for all your advice/comments guys I'm going to have a go and just see what fun I can have with this little mini project!
 
caitlinjade95 said:
Yes, so much post work is seen on the images like this on instagram, I'm yet to find someone who doesn't edit the hell out of the photo on the accounts I follow haha!

It's the difference in lighting/sharpness/detaling that I just couldn't get my head around with the difference etc. Hmmm I have seen alot of people who take photos like that rave to high heaven about ring lights but I just cannot get my head around how there is a major difference haha!

Thanks for all your advice/comments guys I'm going to have a go and just see what fun I can have with this little mini project!
Click to expand...
Ringlights are not loved by photographers because they're a bit of a 'one trick pony' however, I think it's a big part of the answer here, because what you want is that 'one trick'.

What the ring light does at this kind of distance is give perfect shadow-free illumination, because the light source is as close to the lens as it's possible to be.

As others have said, surrounding the camera with multiple light sources would produce a very similar effect, but unless you already have multiple suitable sources a ring light might be cheaper.

Back to your original question though, the biggest difference between those two images is that they're completely different subjects, the other photographers image has more variation in tone and more importantly an actual eye. As you'll have read before in many portrait posts, the human eye is the most attractive thing to put in an image. We're hard wired to look at them.

If you want to learn by copying, the 'technical' details to copy are colour composition and lighting not 5.6 at 1/125. I could probably find you a thousand images on my PC shot at 5.6 and 1/125 and they'd all be radically different pictures, whereas 'similar' images would have similar light and composition (the camera settings could be quite different)
 
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