Laws of Light: Mastering the Beauty Dish

Learn how to use a beauty dish INSIDE and OUT in our latest video in the Laws of Light series! We take this amazing collapsible beauty dish from Westcott from our studio setup to an epic sunset to show you how to truly master the beauty dish.

Today I have Graceanne with me and today we’re going to talk about beauty dishes.

This one she is holding here is what I used to use when I started – this HUGE hard shelled thing – which are beautiful great looking lights, but they are so hard to travel around with.

The new version of these is this one, made by Westcott! And this is a great version because it’s collapsible and this has a very similar look – it creates gorgeous highlights on the face and it’s very compact and makes it so you can travel with it.

It’s this little disk right here that bounces the strobe light back in to the white of the beauty dish and then the light comes out the front – it really makes all the difference.

So let’s get started.

We’re using the Westcott Beauty Dish Switch 24”. It has the insert in it and we’re going to look at it with and without the insert, with the soft cover and without, and with a grid and without.

Most of the time when you use a beauty dish you want to be fairly close to your subject matter. So we’re going to get up about 2-3 feet from her and take some shots with that insert in and out. We’ll see the difference in a beauty dish bouncing back on to the white and a dome just bouncing straight at her face.

With Insert/Deflector Plate

Look at the transition on the highlights on her face into the shadows.

Without Insert/Deflector Plate

Now everything is way sharper – we’re getting that highlight on her skin.

The background is really interesting. Without the insert we get a lot of light on that background. With the insert the light is more focused up front and it falls off might faster.

Now I’ve moved that beauty dish back from 2 ft to 4 ft. It’s really interesting what happens – the background becomes very much brighter and also the highlight on her face because I’m getting this out and more frontal – we’re not getting the nice deep shadows on her cheeks in that and it doesn’t look near as flattering to me.

Let’s take a look taking that insert out now.

You get much softer shadows with the insert. I don’t think this is optimal to get this far away from the subject and even further really doesn’t accomplish what I want to do.

Now we’re putting the grid in and what I love about this grid from Westcott is it’s thick and the depth of that is going to really control the light. That’s really the sign of a good beauty dish, if it’s really thick and gives you the ability to cut the light down.

Obviously, we pick up about half a stop. Half a stop brighter – we see a little more light in the background, the coverage is greater with the insert taken out than with it in. In some cases with the grid, I prefer the insert out because I get a little more area of coverage, although the skin kinda blows with the insert out whereas with the inset in it’s a much prettier look.

Now I’d like to look at using a grid without the diffusion on it.

Without Insert/Deflector Plate

Now we get a nice hotspot on her face and we get a lot of light on the backdrop with that but it’s very hard directional light.

With Insert/Deflector Plate

This last image we put the insert back in and it softens this up immensely. It is so pretty on her face. I just think that’s the perfect area, it’s a softer shadow under her chin, it’s nicer light on the cheeks and on the skin on her face. I get a little bit of glow in the background – it’s a beautiful spot here. So that’s the beauty dish bouncing back in with the grid on – so the grid is going to control the area of coverage, but you just get that nice soft light as the lights bounce back in to the dish and comes through that grid.

So that is just a beautiful set up right there.

Luminar

So there’s a look at the beauty dish. I have always loved this size of modifier for several reasons.

1 It’s small and compact so I can carry it in a suitcase, I can put it in a case with heads. But I love this beauty dish rendition because you’ve got that insert inside that bounces light back in and gives you a nice soft light coming out. It’s just a nice mix between hard and soft. But it still does give you the option to pull that insert out and use it as just a regular octadome.

There’s no wrong or right here. It’s just a matter of knowing what it goes and then applying that to what you’re doing, and by doing that it becomes a creative process.