Equipment modifying a clip-on ring light for casual doll photography

I am the most casual of photographers and am fine with using my smartphone camera for hobby purposes. But while the phone's software can compensate for many of my deficits, I usually have to choose between washing out the skintone, or having the eyes look like bottomless pits. I live in a tiny apartment and have way too much hobby junk already, I want that nice diffuse lighting but I don't want a lightbox.

Poor Kosmos, you've got such shiny eyes but nobody can see them. No filters or autocorrection because I'm trying to make a point about light.


Enter the $10 clip-on ring light! Handy, small, and with adjustable levels. It's made for humans to take selfies with, so it looks good at the distances we use for dolls. The only problem is...


... now the color temperature is too cold. Her eyes are showing up nice and bright, but since she's semi-white, she looks a little washed out.


This is fine, we can add a color filter to our cheap light~

The light snaps together, so with some jimmying I was able to remove the cover. It's already milky white, but I gave the outside a light sanding in the hopes that it might diffuse more.


Fancy cellophane time! This is a lighting gel I got from a local store. If you Google around for warm or amber lighting gels, you can see various effects. What didn't work for me was translucent inks or glass paint applied to the inside of the diffuser ring.
EDIT: Someone asked me for the exact color. This is Roscolux 02 and the color is, I kid you not, "Bastard Amber"??? I am dying. The lighting gel makers know what's up.


Skinny color-correcting donut acquired! I ended up cutting the "ring" open to make it easier to fit. Also I now have more amber lighting gel than I can possibly use, hope I can give some away at a meet or something lol


Snap it back together, and it's a nice golden color.


Tada! It's not as good as knowing how to use a real camera, but it's just the lazy fix I was looking for~


Hope this little experiment is useful to somebody :>

 

@cthulhu, it clips onto the phone! the open area gets centered around your phone camera's lens.

 

Some comparison pics of the different brightness settings now that the natural sun's gone and I'm at the mercy of my ceiling fixture. Kazu has half-closed eyes AND glasses, so he's particularly prone to Bottomless Pit Gaze.

No ring light.


Low


Medium


High

 

In Ye Olden Dayes circa 2005-6 we used to have photography threads in which we compared notes on how best to use wads of bubblewrap to make our flash photography less awful. Ring lights and filters are the benediction we deserve.