What Chuck Does

DIY beauty dish in action!

Reading up online, I stumbled across a few DIY beauty dishes in action. Here were the parts (in no particular order) that I acquired for this simple production:

1x foam board from Walmart
3x zip ties from home
1x salad bowl from Walmart
1x downspout connector for rain gutters from Home Depot
1x 3.75” convex mirror for bicycles from Walmart
1x can of flat white spray paint from Home Depot
3x screws for my PC case (should have used 4 but my holes were misaligned)

I needed the following tools:

screwdriver
Dremel (drill bit and cutting bit)

I followed the basic set of instructions from here:

Inspired by David Tejada’s basic design for a DIY beauty dish and then modifying it with bits and pieces of what others had to offer, I wound up with this final product:

In retrospect, the reflector should be much closer to the flash head because if not, you’ll get direct lighting by the strobe itself at any angle other than straight on to the subject. For example, in this picture you can see the hole for the strobe head. If you can see it, then the subject can see it at certain angles. This creates problems with trying to balance the reflected light (dimmer) with the direct light (brighter) thus limiting the dish’s use in scenarios only where it is directly in front of the subject.

Secondly, the dish really needs to be at least 18”. Most production beauty dishes are 18+”. I could not find anything that wide so mine is only 12” in diameter. The larger it is, the softer the light and the larger the ring-shaped catch light it produces in the subject’s eyes.

This is what the beauty dish looks like to the subject when the dish is directly in front of the subject:

Here’s the DIY beauty dish in action lighting a good-looking and expensive model. Notice the rapid light fall off and the sweet ring-shaped catch light in the subject’s eyes:

Here’s the DIY beauty dish in action on a less expensive but more difficult model:

For saving over $200 I think it was worth the $20 of supplies from Walmart and Home Depot. It turns out that the design could use improvement as well though I doubt I’ll spend the time or money to make a version II of the DIY beauty dish. For me the weak link is the adapter to the Speedlight which is loose and wobbly. I use little pieces of cardboard to reduce the play but the weight on the SB-800 head is still IMHO too much for the strobe.