Beauty Dish v.3

There are a ton of how to DIY beauty dishes out there. I'll spare the details on the step by step here. I basically chose the 18" planter bowl from Lowes for my DIY dish. I think there are much cheaper ones at the dollar store, but a bit smaller. I might have to check them out soon.

Anyway, here's v.1. I used a electrical box since I made this for the Vivitar 285HV. The head on the flash is quite large, so I needed something larger than the standard downspout you see that are very popular. (I did get a downspout for a different project though)


Very basic. I painted it and used a CD with foil to make a convex reflector, and some crude mounting...just drilled a hole so the tripod 1/4" screw can poke through and just put a nut on it to lock it down.


With v.2, I changed the reflector and used a convex mirror from Walmart. Just glued the mirror to the CD and mounted it to the two screw posts.


Added a rebar so I can use the umbrellas holder.


This did not work very well. Added too much weight. The 18" dish was already pretty heavy as it is. I have not used the dish too much, so I have not really thought about updating it, and then this past weekend, I got an idea from the DIY softbox I read on the web. So, here's v.3

3/8" x 4" bolt, with some washers and now I can screw it into the umbrella adapter or just stick in directly into the umbrella holder. Just don't forget, I made this for my Vivitar 285HV, which has the wide head. I have an idea where I can make a locking mod and template so that I can fit a smaller flash head in it as well, but I have one dish and if I'm going to use it, I'll just stick the 285HV in it for now.






That was not the end of it. All this time that I had the dish, I never really tested the light pattern/throw. So, I decided to test it since I think the dish is much more usable now. To my surprise, where I had the reflector, the light throw was just BAD.


So, I moved the reflector closer to the flash head and tested, and moved it, tested it...until I was happy. If you make one, be sure to test and adjust so that you get a nice even light throw.


Here's a sample shot from the updated beauty dish.

Photo detail:
D700 w/Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D @ f/3.5
ISO 640
1/200s
Triggered with CTR-301p

Here's the setup shot.



I worked on a few DIY stuff this weekend. More to come...