Hi all. Sorry if there is already a Beauty dish shot thread, but i didn't see one. Lately I have been enamored about the Beauty dish shots i have been seeing, and it really has a hold on me. I am close to pulling the trigger on a 22 inch for my speedlights and would love more shots to look at, i really love them. Hope you could tell what kind of beauty dish it is, and the lighting setup, and whether it is silver or white, and the size

Thanks in advance.

Most of the are taken with a Kacey 22" beauty dish (whte) and Canon speedlights (580EXII / 430EXII). Refer to the comments on each for details.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adoriaphotography/

Plus another set from last weekend with this setup:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.376376429123178.89983.266127103481445&type=1/

Oh man, like a drug to me, I love them. I just can't seem to stop looking at beauty dish shots like this. I have the bug bad. Thank you, I hope there will be many more posted.

Here you go....
Canon 5D MK II - Sigma 85 1.4 and a Paul C. Buff 22-inch High Output Silver Beauty Dish. Love the thing. Just a pain in the ass to move from place to place, doesn't pack to well.

This is pretty old, shot on T-Max100 way back I don't remember when, but I still love the look of it. Starr was the keyboard player on the Arsenio Hall show. This was a Balcar reflector, but I think it was the 12 inch and not the 18 inch. It all depends on how close you have the light to the subject.

Did a couple of series for a local hair salon. This was from the second session. Beauty dish above, near center, as key; large PCB socked parabolic behind me as fill; 1x3 strips left and right as kickers.

Mola Dish White, maybe reflector as fill, maybe.

Guys, these are absolutely mind blowing. I just can't stop staring at them, the way the light just highlights the faces, so unique. I think this will be a popular thread for people looking in to getting a beauty dish. Love these.

Here are one shot with a 20' Profoto beauty dish with grid and two strip boxes as accent lights . The second shot is with a gridded Profoto beauty as the only light source on the model.

While not a beauty, this image was shot using a Speedotron 22" beauty dish with a diffusion sock.

Wow, such character the beauty dish is capable of. So here is a question. I just ordered a 20x20 softbox and one of the small 9 inch lastolite soft boxes thinking i could come close with them to the dish type lighting. So if i have a boom arm and am able to move the 20x20 around and above the faces will i at least be able to emulate the dish look?

By the way, I do have that the Cowboy studio 98 white beauty dish watched on Ebay in case I can't get anything close with the softboxes, but I am a single dad with two kids and I am trying to spend what extra I have to get my kids a better Christmas and that's why I wanted to give the softboxes a try because I just don't have the 155 dollars for the dish that I want and it comes with the grid and everything.

So I am hoping you guys might have some tips to at least come close to emulating a real beauty dish. I am trying to start earning some money with portrait photography and i have to start slow right now.

Thanks for these great photos so far.

You can do very effective portraits with any number of types of light. More important than whether you use a beauty dish or any specific reflector, umbrella or softbox diffusion, is an understanding of light and how it affects your subject. To be honest, I shoot more portraits with soft boxes and even more with umbrellas. My most well known shots - those of Willie Dixon and Townes Van Zandt were with Balcar parabolic umbrellas, while the Doc Watson and George Harrison images were with Chimeras. More important is the light to subject distance, which is why the image of Starr I posted worked with only a 12 inch faceted reflector. It all depends on the look you're after.

jeffguitar wrote:

So I am hoping you guys might have some tips to at least come close to emulating a real beauty dish.


Remove all diffusors from the box. Fix some wire crosswise to the spokes of the box, about where the inner baffle usually is attached. Use this cross to glue a "counter-reflector", made e.g. from x-folded kitchen foil. It has to be large enough to shield the direct light from the flashtube, if you get the drift. That's basically a "beauty dish"....

Thanks guys, Peter, such wisdom from a real pro, you are awesome. And peter B, great idea. That's the reason I went for the 20 inch softbox instead of a 24, because i figured one a tad smaller would allow for me to narrow the light on the faces some. I love your idea and I will give it a try. I also have a 33 inch octo, the umbrella kind so the flash head is already inside it and pointing inward, and i was thinking that's almost like a dish in that the flash head is kind of a substitute for the reflector inside a dish. instead of reflecting a light, the reflector is the light source, my flash head. I was thinking it would be cool to just make a round insert type thing with a square hole for the flash head to sit it. i am thinking this might be a cool way to make a cheap beauty dish these companies culd make and sell. You could just make a 22 inch umbrelly type softbox and make it white inside, and a round silver reflector that your flash head goes in to inside the umbrella, and then have no diffuser matering to go on, and it should be like a dish. It wouldn't be a parabolic shape, but it would still make for a simple umbrella/softbox type beauty dish.

beauty dish was used for key, strip light for cheek/hair accent

Profoto dish in tight as normally used:


I often use it pulled back for the mix of hard and soft light you get:

Absolutely awesome guys, hope you kep them coming, this will be a great thread for people in the future.

jeffguitar wrote: ...So if i have a boom arm and am able to move the 20x20 around and above the faces will i at least be able to emulate the dish look?

As mentioned above, if you remove the diffuser panel(s) from the box it will give somewhat the same look.

If your box is the kind where the flash faces forward from the back of the box you'll need to make a reflector to bounce the light backward into the box. If it's like an Apollo, where the flash faces the back already, then you may not need anything else.

Good luck.

I used a silver AB beauty dish for this shot to try and mimic the sunset. It wasn't close to the subjects here, so it doesn't have that classic beauty dish look, but check it out.