What is a beauty dish?

hmm, thanks to online bookshops, books are generally equally available everywhere in the world. ok, maybe that is an exageration. all first world countries.

a beauty dish is a modifyer that has two dishes facing each other, the light is reflected from one into the other and onto the subject. the result is a diffused but rather directional and unforgiving illumination. it is called a beauty dish because it *is* a dish, and it highlights most skin defects, hence the need for beautiful people to not end up with a landscape photograph of your grilfriend.

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I don't know about what the previous poster said but it is a flat-ish dish usually 18"-36" in diameter. While it always helps to have beautiful people infront of your camera, I believe the modifier gets its name from it's extensive use in beauty photography usually involving extreme close ups like in make up ads. Like any other light the closer it is to your subject the softer the transition to shadow but the fall off is worse. Essentially a beauty dish is a sm-med softbox only it's made out of metal. Especially since now they make sock diffusers for them. You can also put grids on them to further enhance directionality, tho not with the sock. Well I guess you could put a grid and a sock on it, but what would the point of that be? Mola is pretty much the grail of beauty dishes and they're pretty well priced out of most people's reach, but you can read about them here.

Hope that helps.

-James

Looks like a stainless mixing bowl to me.

Back in the old days we used the big stainless bowls with flashbulbs. Photographed a building once firing off about 20 at one time. Cops showed up a few minutes later :)

What were we talking about again?

One of the first of these units offered on the photo market way back when (I believe it was the mid 30�s) was from the Photo-Genic Co. I have two of these in which I use industrial 1000 Watt clear lamps. The housing is a matt finish aluminum, flat dish with a curved edge bowl in the center to cover the lamp. The lamp is on a shaft that allows the lamp to be moved in a fashion that allows one to �focus� the light generated by the large reflector surface (I find this feature not vary necessary in fact). The link above will take you to a modern housing that mimics this assembly. What is going on with a �beauty light� is that the light from the light source is caught and redirected back to come off of the rim of the reflector. This in effect tells you what is going on with the light. Pure and simple it is rim light from a reflector; it is just not using a small portion of the light generated from the rim of a reflector but converting all the light from the unit into rim light for your use. Now that we have all that straight, who to get it in the studio simply and cheaply. Take a piece of aluminum or brass window screen that is just bigger than the front of a standard reflector that you have. It matters not if it is flash or hot light. Using spring clips of metal like a pony clamp 2201 or a drawing pad clip, clamp the wire to the bowl of your reflector. Get an assortment of metal can bottoms from cans in the kitchen and punch holes in their centers. These are attached using a small bolt (1/4-20) and washers through the center of the metal mesh. We are using all steel due to the heat factors. For my lights I use the top from a steel 100 foot film can. This will create the equivalent of the expensive light gear you see advertised. I have used this sort of thing for years in the studio. By the way you can use this design on all manner of reflectors of different sizes to get the effects you want.

If you check out the "videos" section of photo.net, you'll find some stuff by Gary Bernstein in which you can see a beauty dish in action.