Almost Perfect
By Eric
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2025-12-08
I Have Collected A Few Dozen Light Modifiers Over The Past 20 Years, Including Umbrellas, Soft-boxes, Lanterns And Beauty-dishes From Aputure, Angler, Chimera, Photoflex And Westcott. Some Of The “old-school” Style Photoflex Pack-up Really Small And Light, But Take Longer To Assemble And Disassemble. Whereas The Newer Umbrella-style Modifiers Can Be Really Quick To Set-up And Break-down, But Don’t Pack-down As Small. But To Me The Most Important Feature Is That The Light Output Is Uniform, Without Hot-spots, And There Are Big Differences Between Brands And Styles.
So, When I Bought This 36” Silver Beauty Dish, That’s All I Expected… A Beauty Dish, With Its Somewhat Harsh, Specular Lighting, Which Is Not Always Uniform. But… Wow It Really Did A Great Job In That Regard – Beautiful Results, With No Hot-spots. REALLY Nice. And Then I Wondered, Why Would They Send A Diffusor Cloth Along With This? It’s A Beauty-dish, Not A Soft-box. I Assumed That, If It Wasn’t A Deep, Parabolic-shaped Softbox, That It Couldn’t Possibly Have A Nice, Uniform Light Output, Even With A Single Front Diffusion Panel. But I Was Wrong. Add The Diffusor, And This Becomes A Compact, Super-fast-to-assemble Softbox With Perfect Light Uniformity Across The Surface! Very Impressive. And You Can Buy The Grid For Other Westcott 36” Octabox And Get Soft, Diffuse, Directional Light As Well.
My Only Minor Complaint Is That, The Way The Umbrella Mechanism Latches Is Like A Hair-trigger. If You Don’t Get The Center-piece Perfectly Installed On The Rod, It Can Suddenly Collapse Back To A Folded Umbrella – For Example When I Am Installing The Diffusor Panel On The Front. Just Make Sure The Spreader Piece Is Absolutely And Completely Down As Far As It Will Go, Or It Might Spring Back On You. After It Happens Once, You Won’t Forget…
Now I Am Buying More Of These. I Love Them. I Can Replace More Than Half Of My Other Modifiers With This. It Is A Great Beauty Dish, And Also A Softbox, AND It Is Well-built And Sturdy. If I Had To Choose Only One Modifier To Take To A Desert Island – It Would Be This One. Well-done Manny Ortiz And Westcott, This One Is A Home-run!
