How to make a "Beauty Dish" flash modifier

Step 6: Lessons learned.

Here's where I review my design and note what worked and what didn't.

What DOESN'T work:

- Larger outer bowl - I think this is crucial since someone mentioned that the light needs to diffuse in a soft pattern. Mine doesn't, the bowl is too deep and not wide enough. I'm thinking of cutting the bowl down.

- inner bowl is too big. This created the opposite of hotspots - dark spots! This isn't terrible, and the effect isn't really bad, it's just annoying to Photoshop the changes in to bring the darker parts up to the same light values as the lighter parts. I'm going to cut the bowl down, turn it around, and paint the outside white, as per a real beauty dish. A lot of work, but I'm curious what the results may be.

What DOES work:

-When the light hits, it is much more diffuse than using bare flash. Awesome.

- The catchlights look great!

-the cardboard mount works really really well. It helps that the velcro around the end makes it a snug fit (note, there is no mating velcro on the cardboard)

- Another thing learned - you really need to bring the dish in close to really get the beauty dish effect (unless you have a larger diam dish. I definitely noticed that there was better lighting when the dish is about 2-3-4 feet away from the face. any further and it turns into a bare flash.

See images below for samples of real attempts to take beauty dish pics. Mind you, I am not a pro,as can see with my choice of backgrounds, etc.

Comments

[philslizzy]

Your idea is quite a good one. I would suggest a biscuit or chocolate tin would be lighter than the bowl and won't need the shiny tape. Thanks for this

[glass-eye-studios]

if u covered the large bowl with a piece a piece of white rip-stop nylon (available from most fabric stores for less than $10 for the small amount you'll need) you could achieve a soft diffused light without the dark areas in your specular highlights (catch-lights). This will also make your light source slightly weaker (about 1/2 stop), so if you keep your camera settings the same, you wont be over-exposing (or you could use a light meter to measure the light to be more precise).

[keeny]

nicely done..