The typical beauty dish sizes tend to be 22" (55cm) or 27" (70cm) - for single portraits in the home/ametuer setting, a 22" is large enough and a 27", particular without a grid, is quite a difficult modifier to control in a home space.
What is important to realise is that an ungridded beauty dish is essentially a reflector as observed in the example below compared to a softbox and gridded beauty dish.
monoblock on stand at the same position, only modifier switched between sequence (power on strobe also remained same)
Some Rules
There have been apparent rules for using a beauty dish when obtaining the classic beauty dish look:- position the light no further than 1-2x the size of modifier from subject, ideally 1x distance away
If you are using a 22" dish, do not put it any further than 22" - 44" from your subject's face. This position is the sweet spot - the deflector plate should be directed at the centre of your subject's face when facing camera
With the modelling light, you can observe the light and closeness being good when you have some specular on the chin and forehead - angle the dish at about 45 degrees
Aside from the exact shape of the beauty dish, there are other aspects that can differ between manufacturers and models:
- parabolic shape of dish
- depth of dish
- deflector plate
- size
some cover just flash head, some are much wider - position/distance from flash head
some are inches away from flash tube and some much closer to the edge of the dish, with some being more adjustable (Elichrom's come to mind whilst others are tension mounted - shape: flat, convex, concave
- colour and material: silver/white metal or frosted glass
- size
Using a Beauty Dish with a studio strobe vs speedlight
A beauty dish is meant to be used with a bare bulb and allowing the light to reflect throughout the reflector before being sent forward onto the subject.
Many years ago I had a chance to play with a LumoPro 22" dish with it's official hotshoe mount bracket. The results with a traditional hotshoe (not bare bulb) flash were not quite what I expected with the light output being quite different and with some percularities, in particular the hole in the output and the hotshoe never quite filling the dish which meant there would have been a different light - I never did experiment with speedlights and beauty dishes again.
Whlist it can be done, it's not what I think of as beauty dish light
22" LumoPro with speedlight, up and just out of frame camera right
A professional fashion photographer's Examples
The following images are screen grab from a New York photographer Lindsay Adler's tutorial in collaboration with Adorama.These are what I think of as a classic beauty dish look - YMMD. I've read various descriptions of light quality from "liquid speculars" and so forth but Adler's descriptions and example images do a much better job at describing and showing the quality of light.
Setup and the model
The subject's facial features play a large part in the classic fashion beauty look, with high sculped cheekbones being a key. The beauty dishes used in the photoshoot look like a set of 22" Profoto dishes which have a flatter bottom compared to most other manufacturers who favour a more salad bowl shape. The distance of the dish appears liberally just over 22" away from model.
(C) Lindsay Adler
Whilst it's not mentioned, we're not sure of the angle of the beauty dish - from the grab above, it looks flatter than the 45 degrees, maybe more like 30 degress given the shadow definition under the chin/neck - NOR whether any of the images have been heavily processed.
White Beauty Dish
This first image is our baseline - a beautiful image with a white beauty dish.
(C) Lindsay Adler
As a beauty dish output is not uniform outside of the center sweet spot. With a grid applied, the light is more focused so outside of the sweet spot it is more uniform.
(C) Lindsay Adler
When using sock or diffusion frabric, it makes the beauty dish much mre like a softbox and as Adler describes the impact on the quality of light is to smoothen the highlights so they are less specular and also makes the area outside of the sweet spot much more uniform.
(C) Lindsay Adler
Perhaps a more niche modifier for the beauty dish is the different types of deflector plate: typically they are opaque (white or silver) but Adler shows the difference when the higher end manufacturers like Profoto or Elinchrom provide semi-transparent deflectors and the impact on image quality. In fact, Elinchrom have a dedicated article describing their dishes.
(C) Lindsay Adler
Silver Beauty Dish
The key difference with the silver dish is that it produces wider and more specular highlights which can give more contrast giving the light a more "punchy" character - it is also more efficient in light output.
(C) Lindsay Adler
(C) Lindsay Adler
Consider the silver beauty dish image below and particularly the speculars on the collar bone and area above leading to the model's shoulders - note the difference with the white beauty dish which is less specular.
(C) Lindsay Adler
Adler has her own YouTube video describing in further detail the diferences in white vs silver and a corresponding Profoto article.
My 22" White Beauty Dish Experiences
Normally, we tend to go for the biggest modifier we can for softer light. But I feel the beauty dish is quite a specialised modifier I'll use for single portraiture at home so a 22" beauty dish is the right size - and you can be surprised at how big the beauty dish is given that it does not fold down like umbrella softboxes etc. I quite like the classic overhead look for beauty dish - using a grid can limit the ability to use a bounce reflector directly below but it can be done with a tight headshot.
85mm - no bounce reflector, 2 foot from white wall directly behind
85mm - no bounce reflector - same position only change with grid
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