This we’ve been doing a few experiments with LED lights. The plan is to build our own LED lighting systems that is powerful enough to light a model in the studio and to light a horse on location.

For the models we’re going to try and build a ring light and for the horses we’re going to try and construct a LED panel.

First thing first and I’ve started off playing around with some camping lights. These are fairly cheap at about £10 each and have the handy feature of magnets on the back. The light however isn’t that powerful but enough to light a face at close proximity. The shot below was shot at 1/80 at 3.5 with no other available light. The LED strip is about a foot away. 

The wonderful thing about using LED lighting is that there is an incredible amount of control. For shooting still life or detail shots when you don’t have much available light these little bars are pretty handy. From now on it’s going to be a regular feature in my camera bag!

I’ll keep you updated on how further experiments go and hopefully put together some tutorials for building your own lighting systems. In the mean time if you have taken your ow shots using budget LEDs them please share them with us at the PhotoCreative365 Flickr group.