Light Revolution is a motorised, rotating lighting system

Light Revolution studio lighting system
(Image credit: Light Revolution)

Well, here’s a new one.

Light Revolution is a new studio lighting system, designed by British photographer Patrick Llewelyn-Davies. It’s a motorised two-light setup that literally rotates around a subject, creating circular patterns of light and shining on the subject from all angles. 

This can be used to create dynamic effects, shoot rapidly from lots of different angles, or produce 360-degree product images for commercial purposes. It’s honestly easier to understand once you see it in action – you can watch a video here.

The Light Revolution came about through Llewelyn-Davies’ experiments with light-painting, during which he found it extremely difficult to reliably achieve particular effects more than once. Light Revolution can be configured to produce many different effects, and thanks to its stable motorised setup, it can be set up to produce them again and again.

Light Revolution

(Image credit: Light Revolution)

Effects that Light Revolution can be configured to produce include ring flash, a very hard and intense light for revealing fine textures, or many more. According to the makers, the Light Revolution system works particularly well with materials like metal, food, plastics, liquids, allowing for the creation of unique, dramatic imagery with these subjects.

Llewelyn-Davies plans to develop the system further and expand its use into other fields such as photogrammetry (using photographs to make measurements), so we could well see more Light Revolution products in the future, with even more specific functions. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets adopted by in-house studio photographers to any great degree – it does seem to have the potential to seriously speed up workflows if used correctly.

Light Revolution is available to buy now, or if you’d like to try it out before you purchase, it’s available to rent in the UK exclusively from Wex Photo Video.

Read more:

Portrait lighting tips

Light painting tips

Bounce flash tips

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Jon Stapley

Jon spent years at IPC Media writing features, news, reviews and other photography content for publications such as Amateur Photographer and What Digital Camera in both print and digital form. With his additional experience for outlets like Photomonitor, this makes Jon one of our go-to specialists when it comes to all aspects of photography, from cameras and action cameras to lenses and memory cards, flash diffusers and triggers, batteries and memory cards, selfie sticks and gimbals, and much more besides.  


An NCTJ-qualified journalist, he has also contributed to Shortlist, The Skinny, ThreeWeeks Edinburgh, The Guardian, Trusted Reviews, CreativeBLOQ, and probably quite a few others I’ve forgotten.