Budget Beauty Dish

[paul williams]

Courier just dropped this off,

70cm dish, with sock and grid - all for £125 from eBay seller jscamerastore. Although the dish is sold with a Bowens 'S' fit mount, it uses standard speed-ring adapters (152mm) and if another is ordered with the dish it only cost £5. Unfortunately they don't supply Multiblitz, so just as well I have a few of my own, but I did take up the £5 offer and get an Elinchrom one as well. This will allow a bit of future flexibility should I wish to either get an 'S' or Elinchrom fit head.

Initial thoughts on build quality - not bad at all given the price. The inner 'disc' is bolted in place with rods as opposed to the usual spring wires, which allows you to hold the center whilst mounting it. The mount at the back is riveted in place and there are four 'thumb' nuts to hold the speed ring adapter on, this will easily hold the weight of the dish. The white paint finish is evenly applied, but not super smooth, looks like it was hand applied as the dish was spun. Inner disc is a different colour (warmer white) and would have been nice if it was silver internally, which may have aided efficiency of output

Over the weekend I'll do a few tests on the output (against a standard reflector and small softbox) and the quality of the light.

Paul

 

[Garry Edwards]

Just a couple of observations...

The inner 'disc' is bolted in place with rods as opposed to the usual spring wires, which allows you to hold the center whilst mounting it.

That's the hard work way of doing it. Just put the dish face down on the floor and mount the head to the dish, not the other way round.

Also, that honeycomb looks far too open to be much use

 

[Icekool]

I look forward to reading your review as it is exactly what I had in mind. Been to your "this is me" link and I ike the layout. Is that part ogf the Weebly offer and does it take much effort to get it how you want it?
Mark

 

[paul williams]

Just a couple of observations...
That's the hard work way of doing it. Just put the dish face down on the floor and mount the head to the dish, not the other way round.

Also, that honeycomb looks far too open to be much use

I certainly do it that way with my softboxes, so perhaps no real advantage to the way the center is mounted. As for the honeycomb, looks to be a 30degree one which I think is about right for what I was looking for. Either way compared to the cost of most large beauty dishes, it's practically a freebie

Paul

 

[paul williams]

I look forward to reading your review as it is exactly what I had in mind. Been to your "this is me" link and I ike the layout. Is that part ogf the Weebly offer and does it take much effort to get it how you want it?
Mark

This is just their basic free packages and the basic structure took about 2 hours to put in place, all template based so really easy - just adding the content that takes time. If I wanted to change the overall style I'd just pick a different theme and re-publish, three clicks and the job would be done

Paul

 

[paul williams]

All shots taken with flash tube 1 meter from background.

Standard reflector at f22 - had to turn the head down 1 stop as I couldn't stop the lens down any further.

60 cm softbox at f16

70cm beauty dish at f11

Dish with sock at f11

Dish with grid at f6.7 showing virtually no spill

As above but taken from slightly to the left

The grid seems to work very well and the 'plain' dish gives a nice even illumination at these close distances - far better than the little 60cm softbox.

Paul

 

[Garry Edwards]

The cutoff is nowhere near as well defined as it should be, but yes, much sharper than with a softbox.

In terms of power, a 70cm beauty dish should 'lose' around 2 stops compared to a standard reflector.

Try my earlier tip about fitting the head to the beauty dish rather than the other way round, it will make life much easier and pretty well rule out any risk of breaking the flash tube.

 

[paul williams]

The cutoff is nowhere near as well defined as it should be, but yes, much sharper than with a softbox.

In terms of power, a 70cm beauty dish should 'lose' around 2 stops compared to a standard reflector.

Try my earlier tip about fitting the head to the beauty dish rather than the other way round, it will make life much easier and pretty well rule out any risk of breaking the flash tube.

The actual cut-of is beyond the framed picture, this is no parabolic dish so 85-100 degree spread for a white surface like this one perhaps (& 60-75 for a silver?) and more or less spot on two stop difference. I should have mentioned all the pictures are over exposed by a stop as well, actual meter reading for the standard reflector is f45 at 1 meter

I do, on the initial set-up take the head to the modifier, but being a bit inexperienced, like to try loads of different options and usually can't be bothered to always take the light off the stand - just lazy.

Biggest problem I'm going to have with this is storage, big old thing to hide away - at the moment hanging from a shelf in the loo

It's always a bit of a gamble buying non-OEM modifiers, but more than please with this so far and the interchangeable mount is a bonus as I'm toying with the idea of a Safari Classic set-up for outdoor use rather than get the Mutiblitz battery Propac for my heads.

Paul