#GRIDDED BEAUTY DISH MANUAL#

Look at the shadow under the model’s chin, the shadow has deepened even more compared to the bare dish and the diffusion material. Since I have removed the diffusion material, you can see we are back to the cooler color cast but notice the way the light falls off the background compared to the bare beauty dish or the beauty dish with the diffusion material.

#GRIDDED BEAUTY DISH MANUAL#

As with the diffusion material you will lose between ¼ and ½ stop of light when this modifier is attached so if you are shooting in manual be aware. The last shot with the AD200 and AD-S3uses the included honeycomb grid.

Honeycomb Grid AD200 with AD-S3 beauty dish and grid This isn’t a big deal for me, I don’t use their diffusion materials often anyway – just the grids. Something to be aware of when buying Godox materials if you intend to use the diffusion materials. I have modifiers from Godox (strip boxes) which are the same model, but one has a blue cast with the diffusion material and the other has a warm cast. Depending on the roll the material comes from, it can have a warmer cast like this one, or a cooler (bluer) color cast. This is common with Godox branded diffusion materials. The sock introduces a warmer cast to the light. The biggest difference you will notice when shooting with the sock is the color cast. If you are shooting in TTL the trigger will adjust for you, I only mention the light loss in case you shoot manual like I do. When you use the sock, you will lose about ¼ to ½ stop of light. The second shot also uses the AD200 and AD-S3 beauty dish, but this time the included diffusion sock has been added to the front of the dish. Nice warm sock AD200 with AD-S3 beauty dish and diffusion sock I often use a reflector in front of the model which brings more light into the chin and in the eyes however this article isn’t a how-to-use a beauty dish tutorial, rather, it is just to compare the two light modifiers. The light from the beauty dish isn’t as soft as a softbox and not as harsh as a bare bulb. I consider the light from a beauty dish somewhere between a bare bulb and a softbox. Note the way the light falls off the background and the deep shadow under the chin of our subject. If this were a person, I would warm the shot a bit, but otherwise you can see that the beauty dish provides a nice punchy source of light for out subject. The white and black combo of my model is a notoriously difficult scenario for many triggers to calculate, but the Godox trigger and strobe did just fine. Using the flash white balance, you can see that the AD200 runs a bit cool (toward the blue end) of the light spectrum. The first shot uses the AD200 (with bare bulb head) and the AD-S3 beauty dish. AD200 and Beauty Dish AD200 with beauty dish

In Lightroom, I did not apply any other color adjustments, and we will discuss the differences in light temperature for the modifiers as we go. I set my camera on Manual and used flash white balance for all the shots, with the remote triggers set to TTL auto metering. For the purposes of this shoot I thought leaving the background unlit would be more illustrative of the light patterns for each modifier. Generally, if I were to use the reflector for a background in a real portrait shooting situation, I would light it with a separate strobe to remove the wrinkles and give a nice even white background. Everything was held by a variety of light stands and C-stands.įor my model I used a mannequin I often shoot jewelry on, and for a background a (very wrinkled) 5 in 1 reflector.

I also used an AD200 (Flashpoint version) with Godox XPro trigger and a Godox AD-S3 beauty dish which comes with a diffuser sock and a honeycomb grid (more on those is a bit). The strobes for this shoot were a Profoto D2 500 w/s with air remote and 36-inch Profoto octabox. The gearįor this article I used my trusty Canon 5dmkIV fitted with a 70-200 f2.8 IS II, a very common camera/lens setup for shooting portraits. Other questions you might have are: should I buy a beauty dish? Or is there a difference between a fold up beauty dish and one of those hard to store solid units? and the all-important which is better a softbox or a beauty dish? Let’s talk about it. I’m often asked about the difference between the light dispersal pattern for a beauty dish and a softbox when shooting portraits. Lighting modifiers can be very confusing.

Gridded beauty dish