Boy, that Dish is a Beauty!

I recently acquired a 22" Beauty Dish - two of them as a matter of fact. The first one was on purpose, the 2nd a pleasant surprise. For those that haven't seen one, a beauty dish is made up of a, well, a dish! A hole in the center accommodates the strobe, and a blocking plate sits in front of the flash tube to bounce the direct light back and spread it over the dish.

For White Lightning/Alien-Bees strobes, there's an additional hole that accommodates mounting the blocking plate via the umbrella shaft holder. The dish I ordered (silver, hi-output model) came without this very crucial feature.

Paul Buff's company was really cool - they accepted my proposal to just drill out the hole myself, and they sent me their white Beauty dish as an apology - two for the price of one and a little labor!

Anyway, haven't had a chance to play with a live model yet, so decided to practice with Tammie...

So, first I worked with the white beauty dish and got a setup I liked. Lots of shooters I've talked with haven't really liked beauty dishes, say the light is too harsh, etc. I haven't decided yet, but I tried a setup I read about from David Hobby.


One rule of thumb I'd heard was to place the beauty dish so the distance equaled the diameter. So, I placed the dish about 22" away from Tammie, camera right and high enough to create nice shadows. At that distance the dish has what I'd call a softer hard light. The shadows are distinctive but without the sharp edge true hard light produces.

2 rim lights: one on camera left to lift the shadows (dial the intensity to taste), the 2nd camera right to pop her hair and shoulder from the background. One background light to separate her right side from the background.

Then I played with the placement of the light blocker to see what would happen. I turned off all the other strobesand shot with the blocker in 2 different positions - 2" away from the flash tube, and then all the way out till the plate was even with the outer rim of the dish. Here's what I found:

White Dish, plate in tight

Blocker plate even with outer rim

Compare the 2 images closely (click on them to see larger versions) and you'll see the light gets softer when the plate is pulled back. The difference isn't major, but definitely visible. Also, notice that with the plate in tight, some of the light hits the background enough to lift it slightly. Implies to me that light falloff is faster when the plate is further from the flash tube.


I also wanted to compare the silver to the white, so I left everything where it was, but swapped out the white and ran the same test.

Silver Dish, plate in tight:

Blocker plate even with outer rim

Because the silver dish puts out more light, I metered and adjusted to get back to f/11 for a fair comparison. I saw the same shift in light quality by moving the plates to the 2 extremes, and if I look closely enough I can see another subtle difference between the dishes themselves.

Light from the silver dish seems to be just a bit crisper. The light on her hair is just a bit more specular. And that's what the silver dish is supposed to do - enhance specular reflections. I don't notice the shine on the bridge of her nose changing, but I DO see the shift in her hair.

Means there's interesting possibilities depending on clothing, accessories, etc...


Interesting comparison, and definitely worth the time. Helps me get to know my equipment better. Do you see anything I missed?

And I don't know, but it seems to me the one-light shots are pretty interesting all by themselves...

The images are straight out of the camera, and only cropped to get the comparison shots to roughly match. I wasn't shooting on a tripod, and every change meant setting down the camera.


Hope you enjoyed...