beauty dishes and FITP's softboxes for a strobe

ianmarsh

ianmarsh

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I've asked FITP and he's checking but in the meantime I wondered whether anybody has found a beauty dish that will fit on the mount that comes with his softboxes for flash guns?

A little bit of modifying would be fine but nothing too complex as my DIY skills run to asking my neighbour to do it for me.
 
there are a few on ebay I have seen dotted around, I think they are around the £60 mark... not sure on the size though.

You may be able to mod a 40-50cm dish, but I would think that a 70cm dish would be difficult due to its shear size and weight. I received a 70cm one this morning and its a big beast, heavy too.

You would maybe run into power issues even with a 580exII, I hear dishes eat around 2 stops of light, even more if you grid it. I would think the main prob you would have, is size + weight, and being able to position it correctly.

I'd love to see if you can come up with anything though, very interesting
 
Cheers Rob - Graham (FITP) thought he remembered being offered a Bowen's fit mount so the first link must be that. Hadn't thought about the power issue to be honest. These would just be for home shooting so I might be able to get away with it (or squeeze two 580's in?).

Second one looks worth a punt...
 
Aye, I though the second link looked like quite a well thought out idea, it does seem rather similar to the ones you see guys make from some of the DIY guides around.
 
I'm still waiting for my supplier to get back to me with regard to adapters for the softbox mounts, however I can get a smaller beauty dish, similar in size and style to the Interfit Strobies one, but I'm not sure how effective something so small would be....
 
I've seen some lovely shots taken with a tin-foil roasting tray, but after subjects couldn't keep a straight face when presented with my cardboard and gaffer-tape ringflash I was forced to but a Rayflash - the light was nowhere near as good as my home-made effort, but it looks vaguely professional.

Checking the size necessary for a beauty dish to look decent was my next job - the second one from eBay says 14 inches I think which struck me as a little small.
 
TBH there's not a huge amount of difference between the light you get from a beauty dish and a softbox of similar size, it's a bit more contrasty, but you can get that look just by taking the diffusion panel off your softbox and fitting a central deflector.

This is a bit of a DIT bodge, but the light doesn't know any better ;) Fit a Stofen diffuser on your flash head and stick a small piece of card covered in kitchen foil right on the end of it. This will prevent light directly from the flash falling on the subject and force it around the inside of the softbox. If you want the circular shape to reflect in highlights in the eyes, mask off the corners of the softbox.

You also get similar light using a silver umbrella, the main difference being that the mouting of the flash prevents you from using it as close, but since they tend to be bigger anyway...? :shrug:
 
Rob_Ashton said:
are the strobies ones the type that are on camera?
Click to expand...


Yes..

STR102-Beauty-Dish.jpg
 
Yep, like Hoppy says:

You also get similar light using a silver umbrella, the main difference being that the mouting of the flash prevents you from using it as close, but since they tend to be bigger anyway...?
Click to expand...

Pretty similar effect so I gather
 
This is one of these situations where size really does matter. Personally I don't see the point of anything less than about 40cm, and 70cm is so much more versatile.
And it isn't just size, it's shape and the design of the thing. Beauty dishes are pretty close to being parabolic and the cut off of the light relies on the parabolic design, you wouldn't get that with either a softbox or a reflective umbrella, whatever you did to modify it.
And then there's position; beauty dishes are one of the very few tools that work best in just one position with people - fairly high and directly in line with where the subject is facing, which makes the hotshoe flash on camera variety a bit pointless...
 
I have a kacey bracket that allows upto 2 speedlights to be fitted and any elinchrom modifier. Ive attached a 70cm dish to it although I couldnt do that with the grid on. its not cheap but does the job, I was using it the weekend with a 90cm octabox
 
As PhotoChimp says the Kacey kit is pretty good and always gets very good reviews across the pond. They also do a beauty dish:

504393533_Wv7i5-XL.jpg


http://www.kaceyenterprises.com/?page_id=461

The other guys to check out are Creative Light, its a cheaper arm of Profoto, but the kit is just as good as the Profoto labeled kit. They do a lovely looking and speedring for Canon and Nikon speedlights, it looks pretty well built too.

CL_SPEEDRING_1_L.JPG


http://www.creativelight.com/

Simon
 
Those who bought the Kacey dish. I'm interested in buying one, but cannot figure out how much it would cost, as how much would the import duties/tax etc be. Anyone who have experience with this?
 
Ishootshows on twitter has one, erm its a saladbowl with a pizza plate that he uses, will grab you the how to
 
Thanks for that David.:):thumbs:
 
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