a) The Profoto dishes are excellent and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. (Well, I'd hesitate to recommend the silver one unless you know it's exactly what you want.) Other options include the excellent Mola dishes, or if you need something more portable, Chimera's new Octa Plus 2 collapsible beauty dish works rather amazingly well. Any modifier with a Profoto mount will fit any Profoto head, though you'd want the optional domes if you were using a D1.
b) More or less. As with any light, you don't have to point it dead at the model. You can feather it, you can bounce it off the wall, etc. The Profoto dishes only go on one way and don't zoom; third-party dishes don't have a stop and you'll have to experiment to find their sweet spot.
c) Yes. You can use it alone, you can use it with fill, you can use it as part of a ridiculously complex multi-light setup. All of those options are common, it just depends what your vision and preference is. Personally, I love a dish as key with no fill.
d) In my opinion? You bet your sweet bippy. If I could only shoot with one modifier for the rest of my life, it'd be a beauty dish. Especially if a grid doesn't count against my single modifier limit.
colinm wroteChimera's new Octa Plus 2 collapsible beauty dish works rather amazingly well.
Know of any comparisons w/ real beauty dishes? I have a hard time believing something like this works well...looks like something you'd find off fleabay
Let me just add that Mola is (if not THE then one of) the first Beauty Dish makers for the still photo market.
When I first ordered my Mola it was shipped in a cut down SonoTube (http://www.sonotube.com/products.aspx) with plastic covers on both ends and was packed in this wierd plastic straw looking stuff.
But any modifier you use (even none, bare head) has to be mastered. you have to use it and test it to find out what it does.
That said there are some cool video's on the Profoto site!
hugowolf wrote:
c) Is it commonly used alone or in conjunction with other heads with soft boxes/umbrellas?
They are used alone, with a diffusion sock, or with grids, but not with softboxes or umbrellas.
Just to clarify, when I said ‘not with softboxes or umbrellas’, I meant not within softboxes or brollies. Obviously you can use any other lighting tools with them on other lights.
Ed Cucci wrote:
I'm thinking about getting a beauty dish. ...
It isn't getting cheaper, but the Profoto BD is well made and drops directly onto any Profoto head. This modifier (in white) was my first, and remains my fav. I use it as key at various distances, including quite far away. Fill decisions go as usual (I like a larger SB on axis), but the BD up close can skip fill entirely without looking stark.
Ed Cucci wrote:
I'm thinking about getting a beauty dish.
A couple of other things to consider along with your dish would be a grid ( I almost always use a grid with my BD) and a boom .. some dishes are unable to be aimed downwards very far because the stand limits their movement. So a boom is often needed to have full range.
Ed Cucci wrote:
The beauty dish is always the key light?
You can use it how you want, but there are cheaper, better, and easier ways for fill, hair, rim, or background. How were you thinking of using it?
Watched a bunch of their videos and was not impressed with the information. In many cases, the before and after pix were done with the light at different angles so it's not a very good representation of how the light shaping compares with each other. And, the photographer made a comment that the portrait photographers should be careful but didn't go into any detail. I'm sure there are better resources for determining applicability. Maybe someone can post some additional links?
will a beauty dish work on models who are older than 22 or do you need perfect skin and complexion to derive the benefit?
jzucker wrote: Watched a bunch of their videos and was not impressed with the information. In many cases, the before and after pix were done with the light at different angles so it's not a very good representation of how the light shaping compares with each other. And, the photographer made a comment that the portrait photographers should be careful but didn't go into any detail. I'm sure there are better resources for determining applicability. Maybe someone can post some additional links?
There is a Mola Flickr Group
will a beauty dish work on models who are older than 22 or do you need perfect skin and complexion to derive the benefit?
I don’t know what you see as the ‘benefit’. They are just another modifier. They happen to be in vogue (no pun intended) at the moment, but they were a decade or so ago too. You can use them on any subject you like if that is the effect you want, but they are called ‘beauty dishes’.
They are different from a large standard reflector in that the light is less uniform and tends to be more doughnut shaped in intensity. It isn’t too dissimilar to using a small/medium softbox with the outer baffle removed and a small double or opaque inner baffle. They don’t involve the setup and knockdown time of a non-brolly style softbox, but are a pain to pack because they don’t knock down.
You can use it alone, you can use it with fill, you can use it as part of a ridiculously complex multi-light setup. All of those options are common, it just depends what your vision and preference is. Personally, I love a dish as key with no fill.