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Shooting with a Beauty Dish

I’m asked all of the time how I get that beautiful “glow” in Photoshop, I wish… I haven’t figured that one out yet, I use a special light modifier called the Beauty Dish.

The Lighting Detail Explained:

Mine is available from Alien Bees. There are several on the market today from various suppliers and studio equipment manufacturers. I have even seen a few DIY home built versions that produce marvelous results. For my use I wanted a proven engineered design. I already had invested heavily in Alien Bee studio equipment, so my decision was simple. For those who want to ignore all of the intricacies of mastering this awe inspiring device as described below; the secret is to use feathered light from the edge of the Beauty Dish and not from the center of the directly focused beam.

The Beauty Dish was developed and intended to be used as a portrait light modifier. It has quickly been recognized within the Makeup industry and adopted as a staple light source. The Beauty Dish has a “sweet spot” and I must admit it is very difficult to learn and master. I have been using a Beauty Dish for over four years now and I am just starting to duplicate the results on a consistent basis. Your models will quickly become spoiled by the flattering “tan” effect the light yields when aimed properly. Most of my muse models will not shoot with me if I leave the Beauty Dish at home. LOL

In my initial setup I started with the Beauty Dish 10′ above her and the center aimed about a foot or so beyond her right hand. The shadows were too harsh on her right side so I added the Stripbox 6′ above and just to the right of the center line.

A Word of Caution; Gentlemen Please pay attention to the placement of the legs on your light stands, especially with Booms. You want to point one leg directly at your model laying beneath the light. Softboxes, Beauty Dishes and other strobe accessories are heavy when suspended at great lengths. Be sure to sandbag the other two legs. Lights can fall and brake or worse, causing serious injury to your models and ending your day early on a sour note that she’ll never forget or mention to her model friends.

You’ll notice the difference between the two shots/girls.

In each of the (relatively) un-touched examples above posed a separate set of challenges in achieving the deep rich skin effects only obtainable with a Beauty Dish. I posed Tiera laying on top of the 10 blonde wigs, but the blonde hair reflected much more light. Because of this I was able to set my stripbox 2 full stops under that used on the Beauty Dish. This gave me the “true” effect I was looking for within her skin. Danielle’s brunette hair required much more light to obtain the fine detail, so I needed more light. I was only one half stop under on the Stripbox. This is obvious in the chin shadow across Danielle’s neck. In the final version I photoshopped Danielle’s skin one stop darker and still managed to keep the finer hair detail in both photographs.

The Alien Bees 22″ beauty Dish connected to a 1600 Bee in the studio.

Rembrandt Lighting with a Beauty Dish

In the lighting example above, I am using a single light on a white wall in order to illustrate in greater depth and detail. This is how I feather the Beauty Dish to my advantage. Normally with my commercial work I would have used a black backdrop and an edge light for even more separation (see above). In the First Photo above. I feather the light in front of my model. The In the center example, you can get a better prospective of the camera’s view. In the far Left shot. I wanted the depth and shadows to produce more dynamic effects so I broke the golden rule “Never let light from your main spill onto the backdrop.” I had Danielle turn and face the wall then look back over her shoulder for this shot.

This shot of Dani, (pictured left) would be far more typical of my commercial lighting setup.  I love the  heavy edge light in this, my signature lighting setup.  This is something I’m quite fond of  and I use it all of the time.  Quit often I will mix this up with the addition of an accent light on the hair from the right or opposing side and/or and colored back directly behind the model.

I used the two lights at 180 degrees of each other with my model Danielle in the center. I purposely broke the rule regarding over spill on the background to assist in the separation of my model right side, which you can just barely see the faint background on right. Then I used a harsh edge light to separate the shadowed side of my model (see lighting diagram below).

I posed my model Danielle, about 10′ off the backdrop and both mono-lights are at her eye level and about 10′ away from the model.

To simplify this scenario, the Beauty Dish is represented in blue and my focused Edge light is represented in red.

My prime lenses have a sweet spot of f-11 but I also like the added depth and saturation when I shoot one stop under. Using a Sekonic 550 Flash/Spot meter I setup my main at f-11 (the Beauty Dish) I usually start with it at about 10 feet away from my model/object. My shooting style requires the depth, but keep in mind the key goal here is to obtain that inner glow and deep rich skin tone qualities that my models and I love so much, so I’m shooting at f-16…

The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful.

I have had a number of letters regarding this whole feathering light thing. I have also received a number of  questions regarding my method, why and how-to, so I have added these following examples, but before we get into this let me say.  I was formally educated in photography many years ago.  I read articles, photography forums and talk to other photographers every day.  Some of the options I share came from the fore mentioned venues.  I believe it’s very important to know and fully understand the rules, so that when you break them you can make more of an impact.

Let’s Look Closely At My Point:
Each of the first two Raw files examples above were shot with the Beauty Dish’s light aimed directly on the model, metered as I typically shoot; ISO 100, at a 125th of a Sec. at f-16. The only corrections in photoshop were white balance corrects, JPEG conversion and reduced for the web. (for this article) To be able to achieve consistent results, I generally shoot portraits from a distance of 10 to 12 feet from the subject. I measured the distance precisely in the images use for the examples above.
Photo A. (Danielle left) I positioned the Beauty Dish 5′ away, which even correctly metered blasted her skin in the highlight areas beyond a usable photo. I’m amazed to see this technique in various galleries all the time on the internet it looks horrible to me….  But it does make real cool catch lights in the eyes, so I guess even this shot has it’s purpose.
Photo B. (Danielle center) was again shot with a single light, the Beauty Dish, positioned approximately 10′ away. You can clearly see the the smoothing effect by positioning the light 10′ rather then the 5′ setup. You should also note I feathered the Beauty Dish as I typically do in all situations as this.
Photo C. (Danielle right) Rather then focusing the beam directly on Danielle, I feathered the light. I also benefit with the addition of a 9″ x 34″ stripbox configured two stops under my main (F-8) I have added the fill needed to do fine detailed portrait and beauty work.

Using Grids Socks and covers on a Beauty Dish:
Now many manufactures of studio lighting equipment are producing grids of varying degrees. The idea and use of a grid is to eliminate stray light rays and focus the beam directly in front of the strobe or Beauty Dish in this case. This makes it impossible to use the method I describe throughout my article. I use grids on accent (hair lights) all the time, but I will never use one on a Beauty Dish. I’m not saying my method is the only way, but it’s how I was trained and it works for me. I receive e-mail with images that look like Photo A. from readers all the time and to I suggest; Use the feathered light and through away the grids….

Socks (covers) turn the Beauty Dish into a shall round softbox for all intensive purposes. If you find the shape of a softbox designed this way useful then try it. Perhaps a grid under the sock may be useful in this circumstance. I do have a sock I used it once, but I like the light from my small ProFlex softbox better and so I haven’t seen the sock in many, many years.

Lighting Equipment In General: Coming from the old school mentality, I bought as much light as I could afford at the time. When replacing my old Dyna-Light setup I purchased six Alien Bees 1600 and two Alien Bee 800’s. I like to think when I use the mono-lights outdoors I can over power the sun. I’m delighted with the Bees and have no doubt they will out live me. The recycle time on the 1600’s on the little slower, but I’m not a Click, Click, Clicker Boy and an 8 second pause between each shot is no issue with me.

The Stripbox: Throughout this article, you have heard me mention my love and enthusiasm for the Strip Box. I really love these narrow softboxes. Several years ago I bought two 9″ X 35″ and two 13″ x 54″ softboxes from e-Bay for $75.00. The company is long gone and so is the killer price, but many companies offers these innovative softboxes. Pictured left from Alien Bees. I fell in love with the concept at first sight. I mean the idea of lighting only the model and not all of the surrounding area makes perfect sense.

Hope this helps!

~Dave

My beautiful model Danielle may be contacted directly from her ModelMayhem account, or for additional pictures of her,  please visit her gallery on my website. Danielle appeared in GlamModelz Magazine among many, many others.

Artistic Makeup Artist Christalbell

My Bandwidth increases every month and the costs of hosting the tutorials is becoming prohibitively expensive. Donations are always greatly appreciated and will guarantee continued updates and on-line presents. Thanks so much, Dave

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the my RSS Feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.