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Make a DIY portable beauty dish for less than $10

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The beauty dish is an important piece of lighting gear for portrait and beauty shots. Joe Edelman will show you how to make a DIY beauty dish for less than $7 using a white umbrella.

Since beauty dish reflects, and umbrella diffuses the light, maybe we can’t really call this build a “beauty dish.” However, it gives the same results. So, in terms of the light quality, this DIY version will give you the same light and catchlights like the standard beauty dish. It costs less, it’s easy to make, so it’s definitely worth the shot no matter how we call it.

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How to create strong dynamic portraits using only one light and a beauty dish

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The whole “one light” thing always seems to be a popular topic. And it’s not really surprising. Every day new people are getting into flash. Buying just a single light and learning to master it is the usual recommendation. And it’s a great way to start. The next logical step before buying more lights is to try out a couple of different modifiers. And what better modifier than a beauty dish?

Photographer Joel Grimes likes working with beauty dishes. So much so that he even put his name on one. The Westcott Rapid Box, designed by Joel, isn’t exactly the cheapest beauty dish out there. But, it does illustrate the principles. And while you won’t get the exact same look, you can get pretty close with any similarly sized beauty dish. In this video, Joel shows us how he likes to use it.

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This modifier comparison shows off over 100 different lighting setups

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Flash modifier comparisons can be extremely useful things. Without having to get up out of the comfort of our chair, we can very quickly and easily see how different shapes and sizes of modifier affect how light falls on our subject. Here’s one we discovered by photographer Michael Quack and the team at Visual Pursuit comparing a very wide array of Hensel modifiers.

Hensel modifiers aren’t exactly inexpensive, but if you want the best quality, you generally have to pay the highest prices. While you may not be specifically looking at buying Hensel gear, it’s still a useful comparison. With the subject, lights and photographer remaining the same for each shot, you can quickly get a feel for the differences that modifier design can make in your image.

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5 Tips to get great light for outdoor portraits

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Shooting outside in bright sunlight scares many photographers. I always see people saying to not go out and shoot portraits when the sun’s high in the sky. To wait until golden hour and shoot in the sunset, or only go out on a cloudy day.

Well, I think that’s nonsense. There’s so much you can do with bright contrasty sunlight. In this video from Shutterbug Magazine, photographer James Patrick shows us five great tips for working with it.

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This deep 24″ collapsible beauty dish folds down to just 6″

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Designed by portrait photographer Joel Grimes, the new 24″ Rapid Box Beauty Dish from Westcott seems to tick all of the boxes when it comes to location photography.  It’s small, lightweight, and can also double up as a regular 24″ round softbox by adding the diffuser panel on the front.

Having lightweight and portable kit is important when you’re working on location, especially if you don’t have assistants or other crew with you to help you lug it around.  In this video from Joel & Westcott, we’re going to see how this one works and how it can be used on location.

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Studio portraits: What modifier for what light?

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Santa Claus has you spoiled this year by offering you the studio of your dreams?  A kit of flashes, a backdrop support and even more rolls of paper?  It only remains to push the furniture in your living room out of the way to turn it into studio worthy of the name!

A single point hurts you in spite of all the new material, you do not know what light modifier to choose?

Beauty dish, softbox, stripbox, reflector bowl, umbrellas of all kinds and sizes, flash ring, etc…  It is a bit like choosing a new car, many choices but which really matches my expectations?

No worries, I’d be your dealer today to guide you by showing you the difference in all these modifiers!

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Profoto unveils collapsable beauty dish that won’t hog up space in your camera bag

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36 years ago, Profoto released a lighting accessory they called the Softlight Reflector. Today, we call this creation a beauty dish, thanks to its unique design that softens light in the perfect manner for portraits.

Today, Profoto has announced a new and improved version, the OCF Beauty Dish. And this time, it’s collapsable, making it far more portable and lightweight than ever before.[Read More…]

The Versatile Beauty Dish – My Favourite Lighting Patterns

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Most folks will be fairly familiar with the Beauty Dish and its usefulness in both fashion and general portraiture. In this tutorial I would like to share with you just how versatile I think the humble Beauty Dish can be and show you just how many lighting patterns you can create with my personal favourite light modifier.

First of all, I should describe exactly what a Beauty Dish is for those perhaps unfamiliar with the modifier. Beauty dishes are essentially large metal bowls, which typically are available in a variety of sizes such as 16″, 22″ or 27″ in diameter. They can be used with both studio strobe and speedlights with the correct speedring fittings.

Inside the dish is an internal reflector. This is a disc of metal, spaced a few inches in from the strobe. This deflects the light from the strobe and pushes the light towards the outside of the dish, ensuring that the only light hitting the subject has been reflected. This creates a very smooth, even and flattering light though this can also depend on the interior of the reflector. Beauty Dishes typically have silver or white interiors. Silver interiors are very specular and produce harder more contrasty light, whereas white interiors are softer and more even as the light inside gets more scattered before leaving the dish, reducing the specular reflections.

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