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ok question:

I've read in a lot of your other threads that you use a beauty dish quite often but usually it is a gridded beauty dish.  Is this a specialized beauty dish that accepts a grid or do all beauty dishes accept a grid ( looking through B&H the only gridded dish I saw was a Hensel).  For example I just got a Alien bee beauty dish, can a grid be used with this and how.

I have heard that there is a focus distance to a beauty dish that is ideal is that true?


1) you can use an Speedotron grid on a Alienbee 22inch beauty dish, may take a tweak to the clips but it fits, also on hensel 22inch dishes, again tweak the springclips t stay on tight.

2) there is not a true point of focus, but a relative focus area, the shape will focus the light somewhat and I have often found that a great range for great effect on a BD with no direct light from center is anywhere from 1 foot away to 4 1/2 feet away, beyond that and its fine but begins to lose the effect of it being a beautydish and becomes more of an umrella, except that a gird can make the light into a smaller tighter area than a huge sprad of an umbrella. 

Because I know its coming I will give some more info on them.


Below are a few examples, all with grid several different dishes, I am not a huge fan of an unmodified mola, the spedotron blackline dish is my favorite followed by a hensel silver with deflector, not the center grided one or at least not using a center grid,  I do not use dishes without overall grids unless I am outside using it as a sun from far away.   Broncolor makes a nice one also. 

As I said I only use them with grids, without it you might as well use an umbrella, much cheaper and lighter.  The speedotron has a diffused center I would place a mirror behind it reflecting the light back at the head and a black circle to cut the center so no light comes through, you could also leave a white center once the mirror back is in place light cannot go through anyway.   many other brands of dishes including alienbee are 22inch diameter and as such the speedotron grid will fit any 22inch,  you may have to adjust the clips to hold it tighter or just weld it one I woudl it never comes off and if I needed it without one outside I woudl use something else instead I also  have a few custom made with tighter degrees but the speedotron is cheap, easy and works great no need to have any made unless you have some lighting companies looking to do something for you. 

I like to control spill, flags can but the grids are very directional more so than a flag or barndoors or snoot even if its a tight grid.  I have grids on almost everything except umbrellas, fresnels, and obscure things like likesticks, globes, and glowing objects, I use them on Softboxes, Octobanks, octoboxes, striplights, lightbars, even my snoots have a grid.  I would grid my grid if I could,  I think I have a control issue I need to deal with.....

Now I am including many samples, mainly because I figure if I gave some examples it would show some range of a BD without a major variation in photographer style vast difference is technique or majot model quality location shifts that cloud the issue more, so hopefully you get more of a feel for what the dish can do for you.








































Stephen Eastwood
http://www.StephenEastwood.com