So, what to do when you want a beauty dish (a flash modifier), don't want to cough up the money for it, and have an old stand fan lying around? Make your own beauty dish! Zip ties, aluminum foil, and gaffer's tape ... just a few of my favorite things ...
I wanted to try using a beauty dish for my portraits, but couldn't justify spending the money on a "real" one. So, inspired by the website http://www.diyphotography.net/, I decided to try my own DIY project.
First disclaimer, it's not lightweight. The fan front I used is metal. I'm sure the real beauty dishes are a nice, lightweight aluminum or similar material.
OK, so we had an old fan lying around and the post was broken. Rather than fix it and have a functional fan, I decided to further dismantle it and make it totally useless as a fan. Perhaps that will make sense to some people ...
I took the front grill-work off and it conveniently had a hole right in the middle of it, which also just happened to be a great (but not perfect) size for my flash head. The round - and slightly curved - plastic circle that was over that part would soon become the reflector, taking its place in the center of the grill-work again.
I needed to line the inside of the dish with a reflective material. Knowing that only the best would suffice, I grabbed a roll of aluminum foil from the kitchen. This also covered the circular reflector.
The trickiest part of all of this was the mounting bracket. As luck would have it, I had a couple of metal bracket things in my toolbox that fit the bill. That and a few black zip ties did the trick. Before I zip tied everything to the grill work, I checked the distance so my flash head would be right through the hole and the flash, with remote trigger attached, all were the proper height with the bracket.
Next was how to make sure the flash head stayed in place, but I could take the flash away and also not mar/damage the flash body. Bungee cord to the rescue!
A few photos of the finished product:
The reflector is suspended using high-gauge fishing line.
OK, so now the real test- how does it perform in real life? Here are a few shots I took using my Frankenstein beauty dish:
Here it's used with the flash at 1/8 power - just enough to bring out facial details, but balancing with the ambient light:
This next one was shot in my indoor studio, flash at 1/4 power, just about at eye level (see highlights in the eyes). There is also a second flash, high and pointing down, shoot-through umbrella, that it providing some of the light on the backdrop as well as some hair highlights.
Next shot, high, subject looking into the light. I held the light stand in one hand, camera in the other ... managed to balance it all without dropping anything or beaning my daughter with any equipment ... Flash at 1/4 power.
So, a broader, somewhat softer light than using a bare flash, plus some directional control on it. All for a bit of time invested and an old fan on hand...
