If you're interested in advancing your portrait photography with a beauty dish but aren't sure if it's worth investing in, I'll show you how to try out the beauty dish lighting style in ten minutes and a few dollars.

All you need is a plain old 60cm softbox, available in both single light and strobe sets. Quickly and easily, this will help you decide if a $100-200 investment is worth it for you. In addition to the softbox, you will need three popsicle sticks (or garden twigs, thin dowels, etc.), aluminum foil, and a sheet of black paper the size of your softbox.

How works portrait plate

A beauty dish is a large dish with a hole that holds the flash. It is almost parabolic with a focal point that is usually located inside the dish. This focal point has a reflector that prevents direct light from hitting the subject and instead redirects it away from the inside of the dish. This reflector tends to form two patches of light on the surface of the dish; one is located directly around the reflector, and the other on the rim of the dish.

My real beauty dish, which I will use for comparison.

Thus, it can be seen that the main mechanism of the beauty dish is concentrated in the internal reflective plate, and the characteristic highlights come from it and the roundness of the dish. These two features are fairly easy to replicate. That is what I want to show you today.

Prepare the softbox

Since a beauty dish does not need to have a diffuser panel (“toe”) on top, we remove the diffuser that is usually used on a softbox. Partitions, too, if any. It is preferable to make the softbox round, but this is not so easy if you have an octagon like the Westcott Rapid Box (26") or Rapid Box Mini (20").

If you still don't have an octagon, don't worry, we'll fix this issue in the next step.

Cut out gobo

To make the softbox round, we'll make a simple round gobo ("go in between," light shaping template) and attach it in front of the softbox. It's simple enough. Cut your Whatman paper to fit the softbox; you can leave about an inch on each side if you like to eliminate light penetration, and mark the center by drawing diagonals from the corners.

The center is marked - I left the paper rectangular, which will be very useful later.

Attach a pin at the center point, tie a thread to it so that it rotates freely, and measure 11 inches. At this mark, attach a pencil to the thread. Now you can easily trace the circle, just like with a compass.

Quickly and simply draw a circle. Well, it's like a circle.

Cut out the circle and attach the paper to the softbox in any way you like. I used electrical tape.

The extra length gave me the opportunity to fit the paper inside the software. This is done for greater density.

Interiorreflector

Now we need to make an internal reflector. To do this, take aluminum foil, mine was 12x8", fold it on all sides to get a square the size of an adapter ring. Then fold the corners to make an octagon, and then fold the resulting corners to make a circle.

Now it's time to attach it to the softbox adapter ring using the sticks you prepared. I use two popsicle sticks wrapped in duct tape and attach them to reverse side reflector so that the tip is free.

Attach the reflector to the adapter ring with the shiny side facing in and you have a great beauty dish! You can add another stick at the bottom to prevent tipping, and the folded edges help prevent sagging and kinking.

Fasten the sticks at the top and bottom. Note the circles that remain visible and this is a cheap softbox.

Time take off!

As seen above, the light output matches the beauty dish quite well (despite the mirror-like differences between the white and silver interior), so now we can start shooting!

Here are some comparison photos that I desaturated to better appreciate the lighting; I think this is a great job of simulating a penny-worthy beauty dish:

Used beauty dish.

Used softbox in its original form.

Used imitated portrait plate. Not bad! The result may not be identical, but it is remarkably close to the original. (Apparently I shot above the sync speed on these frames?)

Find out if you are ready to buy

If you're hesitant about buying a beauty dish, this quick trick should help. If you're willing to sacrifice the softbox for a while, you can use this design until a beauty dish becomes available or justified. You can also use a small, shallow octagon to make a sturdy metal or plastic inner reflector and use it as a 2-in-1 system instead of carrying a beauty dish!

The most famous and widely used spherical reflector is the beauty dish.

There is no guarantee that the lamp in your particular beauty dish is in focus. How many manufacturers - so many shapes, sizes and positions of beauty dishes lamps. You yourself will be able to evaluate the available you knowing the principle.

beauty dish side - spherical shape

beauty dish without honeycombs - you can see the deflector in the center

Honeycombs. in this case, these are honeycombs for a standard reflector, but honeycombs for a beauty dish are the same, they differ only in the principle of attachment

The beauty dish differs from other reflectors, firstly, in its rather large size, and secondly, in the presence of a deflector (a separate small reflector in the center), which re-reflects part of the light in the center of the dish onto the main reflector, thereby equalizing the illumination of the light spot.

beauty dish without honeycomb

beauty dish with honeycomb and fabric diffuser

Application area

Portrait photography, mostly young people. A beauty dish with honeycombs gives a wonderful, moderately contrasting light. Not too soft, nor too hard, like elliptical reflectors. But there really are no boundaries. It can also be used to illuminate hair when elliptical reflectors are in short supply and in other cases when you need a large even spot of light. I recommend using a beauty dish with a honeycomb, otherwise the stain is too diffuse. The fabric diffuser in my opinion gives too soft light. Can be used if not available. One of the great advantages of a beauty dish is its portability. You can put it in the trunk and go to the shooting. Upon arrival, just take it out and put it on the flash. There is no loss of time to assemble the softbox, and the pictures are very contrasting and interesting.

The beauty dish can have a different surface material: silver or matte white. Silver gives a slightly harder and more contrasting light. The surface of this material is usually pebbly (i.e. not smooth) in order for the light to come out more uniformly.

Examples of shots taken using a beauty dish

portrait using a beauty dish

using a beauty dish with honeycombs in the studio

The beauty dish gives a characteristic glare in the eyes of the model.

glare in the eyes from a beauty dish

The shape of the beauty dish depending on the manufacturer

The most famous manufacturers of photographic equipment, such as Broncolor and Profoto, produce parabolic-shaped beauty dishes. They are more difficult to manufacture, more expensive, but are designed to more accurately focus the light spot. These plates look like this...

At Broncolor The beauty dish is available in two versions: with a matte white surface called Softlight reflector P-Soft and with a silver pebbled surface called beauty dish reflector.

The beauty dish is known to photographers by many names: a light converter or soft reflector, a “beauty dish” or simply a “plate”. There are two key features cymbals:

Diameter.

Beauty dish - what is it and why?

A soft reflector is sometimes equipped with additional equipment: a fabric diffuser and honeycombs. In essence, this is an ordinary reflector, but “brought to mind”. The diameter of the dish is larger than the standard reflector, there are several additional design features.

To make the Profoto beauty dish better reflect light, it is equipped with a splitter (deflector) in the center. This detail evenly distributes direct beams over the entire plate. A recess is provided for directing light. Honeycombs will help to distribute the light most accurately and efficiently. You can put them on a beauty dish if there is a border.

The most common diameters of beauty dishes are:

400 mm to 410 mm are the smallest;

From 550 mm to 560 mm - these are classified as medium-sized;

From 680 mm to 700 mm - large flash dishes.

A diameter of 850 mm and more is almost impossible to find. Experts recommend stopping at plates of medium diameter. Small soft reflectors are useful in small photo studios, but medium ones are most in demand if the shooting space is spacious. Large soft reflectors are suitable for group portraits.

Beauty dish for on-camera flash big size- a guarantee that the light will be soft. This is ensured by the fact that the object will be illuminated by a plate at each of its points, and this leads to softening of the shadows. You can compare this with sunny and cloudy weather. If a Sun rays forced to break through the clouds, partially reflected from them, they illuminate all objects on the street from different angles.

How to choose "beauty dish"?

If the studio is relatively small, you need to remember that it will not be possible to place a plate at a sufficiently large distance from the subject. However, this will not be a problem if you need to take a picture, for example, just a portrait, but pictures in full height no longer needed. In this case, a small diameter beauty dish will do. Flashes will be with leveled highlights when high quality shooting. Concerning concrete numbers, then the height of the head, as a rule, is within 30 cm, and the distance from the top of the head to the chest is no more than 1000 mm. When choosing a 50 mm lens in a small studio (2-3 meters along a long wall, 1.5-2 meters wide), you can safely use a 410 mm beauty dish.

A small diameter soft reflector is an ideal choice for a home photo studio.

For an average studio, that is, rooms from 3 * 5 meters or more, it is recommended to stop at a beauty dish of medium diameter, that is, 560 mm. More larger size needed in the case when the studio is really spacious and it is assumed that the model will need to be shot in full growth.

A plate for every occasion

The beauty dish is most in demand for fashion photography. Here as a model - a young girl with beautiful, clean, well-groomed skin. You can apply it most effectively by resorting to the “butterfly” equipment layout. This allows you to get the key light.

Another important point- the color of the beauty dish. You need to pay attention to the recess. It is recommended to take a plate in which it is painted in silver, as this increases the ability to reflect light. An effect similar to this can be obtained if a very high quality white paint is used, which is what many manufacturers do.

Beauty dish: what to combine with?

To narrow the light beam reflected from the dish, you can install special honeycombs for the soft reflector. By choosing good honeycombs, you can thereby completely replace the spotlight. In today's photography industry, the effects of a honeycomb beauty dish are very common.

Honeycombs are quite expensive, and the most profitable and reliable option- buy them complete with a plate. Individually, this will result in an even greater amount, but no one can give a guarantee of compatibility. Popular among professional photographers kits including:

portrait plate;

Reflector;

Another important addition to the beauty dish is the white diffuser. By installing it, the photographer has at his disposal a full-fledged round softbox. Professionals rarely resort to a diffuser, however, manufacturers almost always include it in their plate kit.

Plate and umbrella: a great duet

You can use a beauty dish with an umbrella. It is easy to assemble and disassemble, it takes a few seconds, and transportation does not cause problems, so this kit is really common among modern photographers.

When choosing an umbrella to work with a beauty dish, you need to remember that the diameter must be at least one and a half meters. The combination allows you to get incredibly soft shadows - it is impossible to achieve such when using only one plate. At the same time, the plate provides an accurate geometry, since it reflects the light in parallel, but the umbrella gives diffused light. You can choose an umbrella with a matte surface that reflects the rays of light. In combination with a beauty dish, this will achieve a very soft light. True, there will be a small loss of light.

But a silver umbrella is completely useless when working with a beauty dish. It gives the effect exactly the same as the plate, without strengthening or weakening it. But you can take an umbrella to the light. The size of the light source from the umbrella will not change, but this can be adjusted using the beauty dish. True, she will not be able to soften the light, and just an umbrella in the light will cope with this. It eliminates the appearance of shadows in the center of the frame and smooths out the shadow that the plate can create.

Do-it-yourself soft reflector: is it possible?

Making a soft reflector for an external flash is not a very difficult task. You should have at your disposal:

Two plastic bowls (20 cm and 12 cm in diameter);

soldering iron;

Very strong thread;

Instant glue;

You can buy almost everything in any hardware store, it costs literally a penny. What to do with it?

How do you make your own beauty dish?

A portrait is made as follows. First you need to take a larger bowl and very carefully paste over it from the inside with foil using instant glue. The edges must be treated with adhesive tape so that the foil does not bulge. A small bowl should be glued on the outside, also with foil, and also very carefully. Next, make a hole in the bottom of the larger bowl - so that the flash head can enter there. This should make four plastic petals. They need to be preserved. As a rule, plastic bowls are made of a fairly thick material, but fragile, so the petals cannot be bent just like that, the fold points should be heated first. This is where a soldering iron comes in handy.

If it was possible to comply with all dimensions, the nozzle will be worn tightly. In this case, no additional fasteners need to be made, and you can proceed to the next task - installing a bowl of a smaller diameter inside its larger counterpart. There is no secret here. First, three holes are made in the edges of both bowls with a soldering iron, then a very strong thread is taken and threaded through the holes obtained. The thread must be pulled evenly, then adjust the position of the inner bowl.

The system is completely ready, you can start testing.

If everything was done correctly, you will notice that the shadows have become less dense when using the nozzle, their sharpness has decreased, but the highlights have lost their brightness. The image obtained when using a homemade plate is more contrast than without it. The edges of the shadows are softer, they are scattered, and density is preserved in the center of the shadow, providing expressiveness, reality, depth of the picture.

A 12-minute video tutorial from American commercial photographer Joel Grimes on two techniques for creating dramatic portraits.

In both cases, Grimes uses a minimum of equipment; in the first version, he uses only one light source, in the second he adds two side ones.

Filming is on focal length 24 mm, which emphasizes the upper body and enhances the impression of drama. For the first portrait, Grimes uses a beauty dish to focus the light on the subject and partly on the black background. This allows you to lighten the background, make it gray right behind the model, which will then be used in post-processing.

Grimes sets ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to what he thinks will be optimal for this case— 100, f/7.1 and 1/200; then adjusts the height and power of its modifier to get the desired effect. By raising the beauty dish higher, he creates more shadows for a more dramatic effect. The main thing here is not to overdo it - if the light source is too high, the shadows will create ugly lines on the face.

For the second portrait, Grimes creates a different look.

This time his model is dressed in all black, and so that the character does not blend into the black background, the photographer adds two sources side light and reduces the power of the main source so as not to drown out the side light and maintain the drama of the image.

The main problem that often confronts people working in this genre is the discrepancy between the dynamic ranges of the human eye and camera sensors, in which it is much lower. To obtain a high-quality and realistic portrait, the total brightness of the frame should correspond as closely as possible to what the photographer sees. In general, the situation is reminiscent of the one when using the lens you need to convey the stereo image that we get in life, thanks to the eyes.

Theoretically, the laws of light work the same everywhere, however, when it comes to lighting in photography, our main goal is to increase the dynamic range. This is achieved by better filling the dark areas of the frame and fixing the key subject of photography in both shadow and bright light at the same time (with the exception of using original lighting schemes implemented against all the rules of photography to implement an unusual creative idea).

Many aspiring photographers feel that strictly following the rules of photography does not allow them to fully realize their creative ideas. Undoubtedly, experiments have a positive effect on portrait photography, however, the rules were invented for a reason. Often, photographers, analyzing their mistakes, begin to understand that they would not have made them if they had followed the basic laws of working with light. Therefore, for successful portrait photography, it is important to be able to distinguish between a bold experiment and a ridiculous idea that cannot lead to anything outstanding.

Using light modifiers

The most popular among portrait painters are softboxes and reflectors of various types and sizes. All other existing devices for changing the nature and direction of lighting can also significantly improve the quality of photography, provided they are used correctly. The choice of a specific light modifier depends primarily on the personal preferences of the photographer, but it is also influenced by a number of the following criteria:

• how large an area you want to illuminate - the type and size of the modifier directly depends on whether you are shooting a face close-up or making a full-length portrait;


• the skin condition of the subject of photography - if your model does not have skin problems, then the lighting can be made strong enough, which allows you to achieve interesting game light and shadow. In the case of photographing an elderly person or a person with problematic skin, the selection of a light scheme must be approached delicately. A softbox will help to hide the existing flaws, which allows you to get soft lighting;


• number of models - if you are shooting a group portrait and have not yet seen future models live, then it would be wiser to start shooting using a softbox. This will avoid problems with post-processing photos if one of the models may have problematic skin.

Those who want to shoot really high-quality portraits need to learn how to read the lighting schemes in other people's works, distinguish the shape of the glare in the eyes of the model, the degree of lighting hardness, and most importantly, understand which modifiers were used to obtain this or that effect.

Using a beauty dish

To obtain this photograph was used. The silver reflector made it possible to fill in deep shadows under the model's nose and chin. Her skin was almost flawless, and after the work of the makeup artist it became perfect. Due to this, the use of strong light was quite acceptable in this situation. If you've never shot with a beauty dish, now is the time to try it. Despite its simplicity, this accessory is able to change a lot in the frame for the better.

Using a softbox

The next two photos were taken using the same lighting scheme as the previous shot, but using a large softbox as the main light source. More than ten models participated in the photo shoot, and it was decided to use just such a light modifier. This made it possible to equally profitably show the hairstyles and faces of all the participants, to avoid possible difficulties with the problematic skin of one of the girls.

If you are new to using a beauty dish and softbox, you may not notice how these photos differ from the previous shot. This border is quite thin, but the more you shoot, the easier it will be for you to notice it.

As a rule, an experienced photographer can easily determine which light modifier was used to obtain a particular photograph, and whether it is possible in the current situation to achieve best results. This skill helps to correctly adjust the lighting and avoid mistakes yourself. First, learn to determine the depth and degree of hardness of the shadows under the nose and chin of the model. So it will be easier for you to decide which light modifier is better to choose.

Application of the silver reflector

Popular among portrait photographers silver reflector. It practically does not change the shades of light, while making it straight and hard. Proper adjustment of the power of the light source and correct location reflector in relation to the model and the background allows you to get excellent results.

If you don't have a silver reflector handy, you can quickly make one from kitchen foil glued to heavy cardboard using double-sided tape. If you are driving, you can also use the light-protective silver visor as a reflector. Application even so simple and cheap homemade devices bring in order more benefit during portrait photography.

If you still can't use a reflector, aim your flash at a white wall, ceiling, or any light-colored surface behind you. The same is true for a room that has an inappropriate color or a large area for which your lighting power is not enough. The next two images clearly show the difference in dynamic range between reflectorless and reflector shots.

Using color filters

Interesting results in portrait photography can be obtained when color gel filters are used. They can significantly reduce the flash output, so when buying this accessory, you must first of all focus on the power of the available equipment. When using color filters, control the flash point. Powerful devices can damage the material of the accessory when exposed to high heat.

This shot you see was taken using orange and cyan filters mounted on flash units behind the model.

Applying other light modifiers

Although other light modifiers have gained less popularity in portrait photography They, too, can bring many benefits if used skillfully.

For example, a two-meter octobox was used to obtain this photo. The use of such a large light source made it possible to give the model as much freedom in movement as possible.

In their work, portrait painters use photographic umbrellas from time to time. The nature of the light on them is somewhat different from that which is obtained when using a softbox or a beauty dish. Although an umbrella is often not capable of providing professional-level lighting, its functionality is enough to solve many problems, and its compact dimensions and light weight make this device an indispensable assistant when working on the road.

Using a light meter

You can often hear from professionals that only amateurs need a light meter. This point of view is quite controversial. Undoubtedly, in most cases it is really easier and more useful for a photographer to determine the illumination of a scene visually - this allows you to gain irreplaceable experience and the necessary skills. But often situations arise when you need to set up the flash very quickly, or the photographer works with rented equipment that he is not used to. In this case, the luxmeter will provide invaluable assistance, so do not write off this most useful device.

Of course, there are still many light modifiers that are not so widely used in portrait photography, and their use depends, first of all, on the individual preferences of each photographer. If you become proficient with the light modeling fixtures described above, it will be much easier for you to get great portraits.

And finally, a small exam for photographers. Try to determine what light modifiers were used to make this shot.