Popup silver beauty dish with speedlite.

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jamesev

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I’m looking for a soft shell silver beauty dish about 56cm. Does anyone use such and can recommend one?
 
Lencarta do a good quality pop up beauty dish (think there’s a 60cm one
 
A beauty dish is really a pretty finicky thing to set up and use properly. Bulb placement at the focus point is pretty critical; and as Garry said, they are not designed for speedlights (forward facing fresnel light). But if you are going to be using it as a small softbox or gridded reflector instead; they can be workable with a speedlight... but a proper small softbox might be the better choice.

If you get a good BD, and do some testing/configuration changes, you can get decent results even with a speedlight. This page has a lot of examples of the terrible results most get with a speedlight & BD, and some apparently decent enough results towards the bottom.
 
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sk66 said:
A beauty dish is really a pretty finicky thing to set up and use properly. Bulb placement at the focus point is pretty critical; and as Garry said, they are not designed for speedlights (forward facing fresnel light). But if you are going to be using it as a small softbox or gridded reflector instead; they can be workable with a speedlight... but a proper small softbox might be the better choice.

If you get a good BD, and do some testing/configuration changes, you can get decent results even with a speedlight. This page has a lot of examples of the terrible results most get with a speedlight & BD, and some apparently decent enough results towards the bottom.
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That bit of Tuppaware made a huge difference, and may be good enough for some applications. The author though should have shown the actual lighting effect with his various configurations, the dark ring outside the lit area is pretty irrelevant and he's only shown the bit of the light that doesn't matter. Also, the light spill from the back, although wasteful and annoying, isn't really relevant with the beauty dish in its normal operating position - the spill will be going up on to the ceiling and won't cause lens flare.
 
Garry Edwards said:
The author though should have shown the actual lighting effect with his various configurations,
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Yes. I didn't like that the BD blocked the center of the light projection, which is what really matters the most... that's why I said "apparently decent enough." I haven't tried it myself, so I can't say for sure just how usable it would be.
 
sk66 said:
Yes. I didn't like that the BD blocked the center of the light projection, which is what really matters the most... that's why I said "apparently decent enough." I haven't tried it myself, so I can't say for sure just how usable it would be.
Click to expand...

Someone in the comments on Lee's page linked to Jake Hicks' similar test. He's showing the whole pattern, albeit striking the wall at an angle. Rather than test the BD exhaustively with various speed-light setups though, he's done a comparison of speedlight to studio head for each modifier.

https://jakehicksphotography.com/latest/2014/9/1/defining-quality-of-light-in-photography
 
Well, that's an interesting post..
But IMO it would have been much easier (and much more useful) simply to project the light onto a silk, bedsheet or whatever and photography the light from the other side. That, with the beauty dish arranged in a typical (high, close and pointing downwards) position would show the quality of the light much better.

One of the advantages of being bone idle is that I always go for the simple approach:)
 
Scooter said:
Someone in the comments on Lee's page linked to Jake Hicks' similar test. He's showing the whole pattern, albeit striking the wall at an angle. Rather than test the BD exhaustively with various speed-light setups though, he's done a comparison of speedlight to studio head for each modifier.
Click to expand...
But only one example of the speedlight in a bare BD; with the typical terrible light pattern which I would expect. I'm more curious about how usable it is with the stoffen/diffuser over the speedlight in the bare BD... I was rather surprised by the apparent results that gave.

I suppose I could do some testing of my own... but I don't really have a need and therefore no motivation.
 
sk66 said:
But only one example of the speedlight in a bare BD; with the typical terrible light pattern which I would expect. I'm more curious about how usable it is with the stoffen/diffuser over the speedlight in the bare BD... I was rather surprised by the apparent results that gave..
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I was surprised at it too, and when I went back for another look I couldn't help wondering just how much retouching may have been carried out - not that there's anything inherently wrong with PP work of course, but it isn't something that I personally do for any example or tutorial images - people need to see the real thing, warts and all.
Turning now to the Jake Hicks page, he writes quite well and with authority, but I find his premises hard to agree with. In particular, he seems to feel that the problem with speedlites is that the light source is too hard without diffusion - I understand why he thinks that, but the real reason for the problems generally is the inclusion of the fixed reflector, not the lack of diffusion.
sk66 said:
I suppose I could do some testing of my own... but I don't really have a need and therefore no motivation.
Click to expand...
I think that constant testing, complete with peer review - publishing the results and looking at the comments - is essential.
 
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