I have long wanted a Beauty Dish but all the commercial options are pretty expensive.
Then I came across a couple of DIY projects out there on the web, including one from ishootshows.com and one from David Tejada made even more famous by a Strobist.com blog entry. The one from ishootshows.com looked beyond my ability (I am not good at metal working), but the Tejada one was very interesting since it looked like the most complex tools needed were a sharp knife and glue.
I found one more entry out there that talked directly about how to make it work with the same portable flash head I use every day: the Vivitar 285HV. The white downspout adapter was intriguing, so I set off to look for one at my local Lowe’s. I couldn’t find it at first, but while looking, I found this interesting gizmo with the guttering… a 3×4 aluminum outlet for $3.58. The smaller end of this is almost exactly the same size as the Vivitar 285HV.
Next, I found a 3 inch convex mirror with the auto stuff (trailer hitches and such were also in this section): $1.98
I already had the empty CD-ROM case and had a CD-ROM that I had recently burned by mistake. (Put the wrong files on it.. hate it when that happens.): Saved from the trash
So that left the bowl. I had a shell from a shop light, but that would involve metal work – even if it was just tin snips. I tried to find the bowl mentioned in that last article above, but the only similar one they had at Lowe’s was 8 inches wide and was something like $8, so I wasn’t excited by that prospect. I thought of using metal mixing bowls like the first DIY link, but again that was metal work and I didn’t have the tools. I searched for plastic bowls that the wife wouldn’t miss, but figured she’d miss it when she saw me cutting a hole in the bottom. 
I looked at the grocery for tin foil type pans with no luck.
I had moved the entire project to a back burner until a solution presented itself when I found myself at Dollar Tree for other reasons entirely. On a whim, I went and looked at the dishes section and found an 8 inch plastic mixing bowl. AND it was white, so bonus. Cost: Well, $1 .. it was a dollar store.
I needed to modify the gutter outlet slightly to fit over the flash head, so I applied some pressure with pliers to bend it just a little bit so it fit snugly over the head. I figured with luck, friction would ultimately hold the whole thing together.
I pulled out a drywall knife (also called a carpet knife) that was laying around here at the studio from when we had first moved in (there was drywall work to be done) and started the cuts I needed. In retrospect, an Exacto knife would have been a MUCH better choice since they are generally sharper – and this one was more dull than usual from cutting drywall.
So I used the outlet as a guide to cut out a hole in the CD-ROM container’s base.
When the top is put back on the case, it seemed like friction would hold that part together.
I used some beading glue (think Super Glue) to attach the CD-ROM to the inside top of the case and then attached the convex mirror using its supplied adhesive to the middle of that.
Then I had to cut a hole in the Dollar Bowl. Well, cheap bowl means cheap plastic and this is one of the places where a sharper knife might have worked better. The plastic was brittle, so under the dull drywall knife, it tended to shatter instead of cut. The end result was not terribly pretty.
I figured at this point, I would find some sort of backing to cover that if it bugged me in the future.
I started to try to put it all together with the beading glue, but it just was not very successful since the CD-ROM case had all those weird edges. There just wasn’t enough surface area to make a connection that would stay put under pressure. Frustrated again, I put it away for a couple days.
For a quick segue, I work with a charity haunted house and this is the time of year when we put a lot of work into projects necessary to get ready for the new year. Its hot work, but oh, so much fun. Well, one of the staples of our work up there is Liquid Nails. To quote my friend Gru, “Light Bulb.”
Again, left over from our studio move in, I had a caulk gun already loaded with Lock Tite. Its a gooey, white glue that spreads like caulk and holds very well. And being bulky, it would fill in the cracks… and then some.
As you can see, it even “fixed” some of the ills left behind by the shattering plastic. When it was dry a day later, it felt pretty solid. As I suspected, friction is sufficient to hold the dish in place on the flash head.
(Without the top of the CD-ROM case, it is easier to fit on.)
So, sum total expense: $6.56 plus some glue, some Lock Tite, and a few bits that would have ended up in the trash anyway. At this point I’m thinking, if its not perfect, its still under $10, so I’m happy.
Now some light tests.
From left to right, With the Dish, With the Dish without the top of the CDROM case, Bare Flash, and with my umbrella. Its important to note that without the top and bare flash were more than 3 stops difference from the dish and the umbrella. The settings for the dish and the umbrella were the same in these tests. All images are Straight Out Of Camera (SOOC).
Pull backs…
The pull backs are very interesting because you can see from the light on the floor and background how wide the light field is.
And the headshots from these setups…
With the Dish
Dish without the Top
Bare Flash
With Umbrella
Its interesting to note that the results with the top off and with bare flash are almost exactly the same.
The light pattern with the umbrella is, predictably, nice and smooth and well spread out. The beauty dish did exactly what it is expected to do: soften the light compared to a direct flash, but not be quite as soft as a reflected umbrella or softbox.
The cheap plastic bowl bleeds light (as shown in the images above) and the Tejada solution manages this much better, but I think that it still works quite nicely.
Conclusion: for what it is, a dirt cheap, simple solution, its great. I will probably even use it with clients. The white balance is different than the umbrella reflected or even the direct flash, which is probably a result of the white plastic bowl. White balance is easy to fix as long as it stays consistent (the jury is still out on that).
All in all, it was a fun project and I may do something similar again.
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