Beauty dish

woody25

woody25

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Hi, I'd really appreciate some advice from someone who uses a beauty dish their shoots.

I am after a beauty dish for use indoor and outdoors and have SB800's for strobes. My fear is that I will be underpowered and would need a hi powered flashgun or a flash head.

If this is the case would I need a portable power/battery pack? Also, anyone who uses these, can I plug a flash head into it or are these only for flash guns?
Also would you recommend a make of beauty dish, as I hear the small flash gun ones do not really do the job.

I think this will get expensive quickly, so for the short term I was thinking of renting the lighting equipment. I live on the outskirts of London, maidenhead, so did not want to travel in to somewhere like Calumet. I'd really appreciate any good recommendations for lighting hire, either pick up or by post.

Many thanks in advance
Woody
 
I am very much a novice to studio style lighting but I got a 14inch (I think) Bessel beauty dish with grid and sock which I have used once or twice indoors with a single Canon flashgun more or less equivalent to your Nikon one. You can find Bessel stuff easily enough on eBay. It did what I wanted it to do and cost around £55 I seem to recall. It attached to a Bowens adapter for flashes ahich I then stuck on a lightstand. So, yes, the costs do quickly mount up even for budget stuff.

No doubt more powerful heads will do a better job, especially if you want to take it outdorrs in the day, but even the basic gear can work if you are just experimenting.
 
In a pinch - I have stuck an SB700 in the back of a 70cm beauty dish - with a honey comb and got a decent picture out of it, with a subject distance of 6-8 feet.

f4 or lower with 200 - 400 iso will be required for the above and you will need to manually set your speedlight as the reflective disc plays havoc with ttl.

As always, subject and distance is key, but for anything up to the width of a sofa the speedlight will be fine.
 
Many thanks guys, thanks for the speedy response.
Yeah I think a dish from eBay sounds like the ticket and I'll use an SB 800 on manual settings, good to know about the ittl.
Its for personal work not a paying job so I can gauge how it works out on the dish size and power, and not worry about the results too much.

Any recommendations for lighting rentals would be most appreciated.
Thanks again,
Woody
 
The so-called beauty dishes that I've seen specifically for hotshoe flashguns are a total waste of time, and nothing like a beauty dish.

The ones designed for a studio flash will work, with a S-fit adapter. You will be very low on power, but as they are designed to be used very close to the subject, you will be able to manage.

You will though have 2 problems.
1. Lack of a modelling lamp - this will involve a lot of trial and error, because very precise positioning is needed to get the best results
2. The light bounces back from a deflector, and a lot of it will just go straight past the flashgun, so you will need to stuff the gaps between flashgun and beauty dish with crumpled up cooking foil or similar.
 
Lastolite make an ezybox 2 speed-light bracket, it holds 2 speed lights together, not sure if it will fit in a beauty dish, but may be worth taking a look at :)

Take a look at this ezybox 2 video tutorial
 
I think you have solved my issue, fantastic.
I found a beauty dish 56cm with a Bowes S type fitting for £80 + the idea of using the lastolite 2 speedlight bracket is genius. It should fit, but will check!
This will save on all that overpriced renting for what I need.
You have made my night, thanks guys!
Woody
 
Two speedlights will not fit in the back of a Bowens S mount. I did alot of research a few years back, before there was a plethora of speedlight adaptors and came up with this:

70cm beauty dish.
Sb700
Micansu adaptor.

(I posted the set-up in my gallery as I am not registered for image hosting elsewhere).

The Micansu is made of metal and more than a match for the weight of the bigger beauty dish. As Garry mentioned - the rear definitely needs to be plugged with tin foil to stop light spillage.

Good luck with your new dish.
 
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There are a lot of products to use beauty dishes with speedlites but on the whole they are too directional to get the full use and effect out I one. Speedlites are designed to concentrate light in an area because they are low powered but to use a beauty dish you generally want something more omni directional. A diffuser cap would help but then there is that light loss to deal with.
 
Speedlights with a beauty dish are hard work.

Depending on what you want to do with it, you may find you get better results from a parabolic umbrella.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Speedlights with a beauty dish are hard work.

Depending on what you want to do with it, you may find you get better results from a parabolic umbrella.
Click to expand...

Yes. Purists may hate me for this, but you can get a very similar effect to a beauty dish from a smaller silver umbrella, like this 24in Kood for a tenner http://www.premier-ink.co.uk/photog...-umbrella-silver-reflector-24inch-p-1749.html Decent quality too.

You can't use it as close as a beauty dish, and the catch-lights are different of course, but the actual light quality is very similar.

The problem with speedlites is the directional nature of the light beam that doesn't play well the the central deflector of a beauty dish. The light needs to radiate around the centre of the dish to give that characteristic harder core of light within a softer overall effect and reverse-firing into a brolly mimics it quite well.

Trick I've done that works even better is to get a slightly larger silver brolly (Kood 33in) then sew a 'dart' into the rim with a sewing machine. My missus did it in a few minutes. That pulls in the rim to create a parabolic shape for more direction to the light and less spill. Another tip is you can also vary the effect by zooming the flash head and/or sliding the gun up and down the shaft.

With all that, you can replicate a pukka beauty dish almost exactly. Trim the shaft so you can use it as close as possible and just post-process the catch-lights to taste. You can hardly go wrong at those prices :thumbs:
 
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