Beauty Dishes are light modifiers that take your light source, bounce the output against an internal reflector, and then spread that light out via the inside of a white dish. The result is beautiful soft light that is similar to a softbox. Beauty Dishes are more versatile than that though, depending on how you place them or modify them. But what if you want to use your beauty dish with your existing on-camera strobes? Here are two methods how to do this.
The Professional Way
Here, I'm using an Interfit White Beauty Dish, Canon 580 EX II, Photoflex Speed Ring for SP systems, and Photoflex Adjustable Shoe Mount.
Place the Speed Ring around the back entrance of the Beauty Dish so that the part of the Speed Ring with the screws is flush against the dish. Keep on the rubber tips at the end of the screws, and screw them in until they have a tight fit around the entrance.
After that, screw the adjustable screw-mount bracket into one of the holes with two other smaller holes next to it. This way, the two units will fit together tightly. That's important when it's holding your flash unit.
Place one of the cold shoes around the other part of the bracket, and move it close against the Speed Ring. Place your flash unit inside the cold shoe, and then adjust the side screw to make sure that it is snugly fit in.
Place the entire unit on a lightstand, tripod, or boom pole, and get to work.
This method doesn't play well with wireless infrared TTL firing. However, you can use radio triggers or sync cords.
So what do the results look like? Here's an image:
The Creative Way
This method requires an Interfit White Beauty Dish, Canon 580 EX II, and a Gary Fong Lightsphere Collapsible.
Here's a video on how I did this:
The results:
I personally like this configuration better.
And with this configuration you can still get that gorgeous catchlight in the eyes.
There are other ways to do this too, but we want to know if you have any other creative hacks to make this work. Let us know in the comments below.
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