Beautiful Mike, love it. Thinking about what everyone has said so far, I am now trying to decide what is more important for me right now, a flash meter or beauty dish. I have been looking at light meter vids on youtube and man I would love to have one of those sekonics, seems so useful. Snce I have three softboxes and two shoot through umbrellas, maybe a light meter would be a more important purchase for me right now.

By all means, keep them coming guys.

jeffguitar wrote: ...Snce I have three softboxes and two shoot through umbrellas, maybe a light meter would be a more important purchase for me right now.

I know many excellent photographers who have never used a flash meter and see no need to do so, and I know others who use them and like them. (I like them.)

You've got a flash meter in your camera, if you use it that way. I'd say dish first.

here is some beautydish shoots from me. I love using it outdore and in the studio.










I use the mola demi beautydish.

Wow, amazing shots

Haven't been shooting much the past year but here are a couple from early this month. A single Mola Setti over head.Justin and Brett

There is some great photos in this thread ,makes me think twice about posting my humble attempt.But here goes. 22in Paul Buff silver,Ilford FP4 film


img003 by lifthard1, on Flickr

The unique qualities of dish lit shots are related to the design and the inverse-square law.

Moving a light very close to the face creates very rapid fall off and "steep" contrast gradients from nose to ears on the face. Centered above the slim symmetrical face of a model in a full face pose the combined effect is very dramatic because it frames the front "mask" of the face with shadows on the sides creating a "spotlight" effect on the front of the face.

But inverse-square fall-off and the placement of the light centered and overhead (a boom is needed for ideal placement) creates an exposure problem because the forehead winds up physically closer to the light and it's physically impossible to get the same exposure on forehead, eyes, moutn and chin at extreme close distances. Moved further away the relative distances of those body parts are more similar and the exposure more even.

If you tried that close-in centered strategy with a softbox you'd either get a blown out forehead or under exposed eyes. The physical design of a dish with a flat plate over the flash head solves that exposure dilemma by creating a dead spot in the middle of the light footprint. By aiming and feathering that darker center of the pattern on the closer forehead the overall exposure on the face by the lower half of the pattern is made even.

Because the design puts the flash unit behind and most of the output gets bounced back down into the dish before exiting forward it allows closer placement than a light with an umbrella would and produces more even lighting with a speedlioght's enclosed flash tube than just blasting it through the front of a sofbox.

But the "hole in the donut" lighting pattern disappears as the dish is moved further back. You can see this by aiming it at a wall starting from about a foot and then moving backwards. From around 8' it becomes a very diffuse source when used in a small space with reflective walls because so much "spill fill" gets bounced around the room a wide shot of the room will look like and overcast day.

I use that "spill fill" cause and effect to advantage by using my 22" Buff dish as my fill light back near the camera 8-9' from the subjects. I discovered the dish was a great fill source by accident. When I got mine I did a direct comparison between it and a SB with a 20" circle mask. Being lazy I just swapped the two as key and fill and noticed how much better the fill was from the disk, because so much more of the footrprint hit the ceiling and walls in my small space. That of course will vary with the space, height of ceiling, color of walls, etc.

I also noticed that because it was so small from 8' near the camera lens it created just a pin-dot of a second catchlight dead center in the pupil. That solved the problem of the distracting secondary catchlight that occurs when a large modifier is used as fill. They are impossible to retouch out of the eyes which is why fill gets move to the side. With the dish it just takes 2 seconds with a brush sampled from the black part of the pupil to removed the fill catchlight.

So I've been using my dish with diffusion sock primarily as my fill light, not for it's intended use. That's because I don't have occasion to shoot many models with slim, symmetrical faces in full face poses with a key light centered a foot or so from their face on a boom. But I'm ready if one shows up, rings the doorbell and the wife lets her in

Like a ring light it was designed for a specific task but can be used for many other ones. From a distance it's footprint is larger than any other source the same size, such as a 22" umbrella or SB. As mentioned that can be an important factor in the overall holistic character of the light when used in a small reflective room. It's similar to the "wrap around fill" effect if skylight or boucing fill lights off the back wall of the studio, a strategy some portait shooters used in the 60's to get the flill lights out of the wall. Joe Zeltsman, photographer of that era who taught my mentor Zucker mounted his fill lights (a bank of flash heads with standard reflectors) on the studio ceiling that way to both get them out of the way and make the fill part of the exposure a constant that never changed.

That was a timely bump for this thread because I just got my first monolight (B800) and a beauty dish and I just tested it out last night. I'm sure this is not what the OP had in mind when wanting to look at BD shots but here's my first shot with one - a self-portrait:

Great explaination, thanks Chuck!

Rob

Note the large unnaturally low fill catchlight from the reflector? That's why I use my dish for fill.

The lack of nice looking natural catchlight at 12 o'clock in a centered pattern is a telltale the key light may be at too steep an angle to the face. If you can't see the catchlight of the key light it means the brow is shading it.

If you are shooting from a tripod sit down lower until the camera does not see the nose holes. Then adjust the key light guided by the catchlight and put fill centered about chin level (use your speed light for fill and don't worry that the background isn't white until you understand how to light the face.

When you see a shadow darker on one side of the nose and side of the face as here the light is not centered on the nose. Centering the light exactly on the nose in a full face pose is what creates symmetry: pattern matching nose at camera / ears equal size pose. Off to the side slightly in a Loop pattern you get similar modeling on most of the face but the sideways shadow on the nose make two sided seem different and the overall look more lopsided. Get the light perfectly centered on the nose and compare and you'll see what I'm talking about. There's no right or wrong way, its just a matter of whether or not you want to create symmetry in the full face view. That requires precise facial angle to camera and and light to nose.

So next time lower the Dish relative to the eye line and use your speedlight as fill just above / below lens so it's smaller catchlight winds up in the center of the pupil with the dishes at 12 o'clock. When you keep the fill near centered like that you don't need a huge modifer because it does not create any shadows the camera sees.

With both lights pointed towards the background if lights are at 8ft and background is 3 ft futher back a white on will be rendered 1 stop darker than a piece of it held next to the face (inverse square) give or take whatever spill fill is bouncing around the room. It will not give you white but if you start with white you get a nice med. gray with even lighting (because both key and fill are centered).





DigMeTX wrote:
That was a timely bump for this thread because I just got my first monolight (B800) and a beauty dish and I just tested it out last night. I'm sure this is not what the OP had in mind when wanting to look at BD shots but here's my first shot with one - a self-portrait:

Quantum Qflash mounted on a socked Kacey beauty dish with silver reflector beneath for fill.

Here's an example of the dish used further back, not because of it's unique "donut hole" pattern but because it's small size lets me get to up higher with my low ceilings than I can with a softbox and because of the "wrap around" spill fill effect I mentioned previously. A second fill light was used chin level or slightly at about the same power with a hair light (16 x 22 SB with 40 degree fabric grid and circle mask) behind and to the right. Background is illuminated with fall off from key and fill:

I just recently re-edited this shot. I like the shadows and contrast the beauty dish provided.


Untitled by emilhandke, on Flickr

_MG_1852-Edit by battlefloydflyer, on Flickr

Elinchrom 600 RX in a Speedotron BD with PCB 30 degree grid and sock.

Jon wrote:
Speedotron BD with PCB 30 degree grid and sock.

A grid and a sock?

Jon Uhler wrote: Elinchrom 600 RX in a Speedotron BD with PCB 30 degree grid and sock.

Ian Ivey wrote: A grid and a sock?

An Elinchrom/Speedotron/Buff combo? It's a Frankenlight!

(Maybe the sock holds it all together.)

Frankenlight...

Yup...grid and a sock....

I know I am not the only one that does it.....

Jon Uhler wrote:
Frankenlight...

Yup...grid and a sock....

I know I am not the only one that does it.....

I don't see why it would be shocking to anyone to want to have light that is both contained but soft.

brad

A sock doesn't soften light, it diffuses it. Softness -- a measure of the severity of the edges of shadows created by the light source -- is a function of the size of the light source relative to the subject.

I think Jon is right to say he's not the only one who does it. But to my mind, using a sock and a grid is like putting a diffuser on the end of a snoot.