Reply To: DIY Beauty Dish

[Worst Case Scenario]

All my gear is old and most of it has had a trip to my shed at some stage. I had a DIY high glide system for a few years until a mate of mine died and left me his real system. I have a half DIY beauty dish  which uses a 22 inch reflector / dish and the centre piece is made of a stainless steel hamster feeding dish. My main light is a (about ) a 4ft octagonal soft box which was completely home made in the days before you could get cheap Chinese units. It  uses fibre glass rods from a tent, plastic plastic connecters and carbon fibre rods from a kite shop and lots of black material with silver material sewn onto the insides. I”ve been using it daily for nearly 15 years with out any problems.

If I can hijack the thread slightly, what exactly are the characteristics of a beauty dish? i.e. what does it do that a soft box doesn’t? I saw a comparison pic from a website a while ago that had a dummies head shot with all the different lighting attachments. Out of all the shots the soft box seemed to give the best light and nearly everything else looked pretty much the same.