Beauty Dish

[Hell on earth]

White or silver
Opinions on both please

H

 

[philthejuggler]

Silver gives a crisper, but less forgiving result. White is softer - closer to a softbox look but more dramatic than a octobox.

Outdoors - silver will give you more power as less light is lost.

Phil

 

[Hell on earth]

Thank Phil

H

 

[SpikeB]

Generall I use my white one far more than the silver, so white.
If this is related to other posts about setting up a portrait studio, beauty dishes are great on models with flawless skin & make up.
Personally I've found softboxes to be more flattering on "normal" people, the harsher light of the beauty dish shows up every imperfection, I know one photographer who always refers to them as ugly dishes for this reason

 

[Garry Edwards]

Generally, as per the above posts.

Certainly a beauty dish is no kind of panacea, they are designed to create the right shadows in the right places on the right face - and the results can pretty awful if they are used wrongly, or on the wrong faces. I view them basically as a half way house between a softbox and a fresnel spot, with the fresnel spot suitable for a young model who has a perfect skin, perfect bone structure and perfect makeup, and the softbox suitable for her mother...

Differences between white and silver and plain, and I wrote an article about it -which now seems to have disappeared from the website, I'll try to find the link. But basically, the white is less harsh, less dramatic and more suited to models who aren't quite perfect. They still require a high standard of skill though.

 

[Hell on earth]

Thanks Spike and Garry

I'm thinking for the moment I may spend on a 140 x30 ? softbox and grid and a Honeycomb Grid Set of (10 20 30 40) as think they will get more use.

H

 

[saracenhouse]

We have to BDs, a smaller Bowens one with the grid diffuser and a large Calumet one (I think it's 27 inches) with the honeycomb grid. They are both awesome for different reasons and both extremely versatile.

The large Calumet one also came with a 'shower cap' sock which turns it into a lovely round softbox... So if your choice is a BD or a softbox, I'd go for the BD with the diffuser sock to do both jobs.