Check out my DIY beauty dish

[Perry Ge]

I built an extremely ghetto beauty dish tonight out of tin foil, and did quick shoot with it. 1 strobe, a 430EX with the beauty dish attached, mounted on a tripod w/gadget infinity poverty wizards as triggers.

The thing was ridiculously easy to make. I used a big plastic basin as the template, wrapped tin foil around the inside to get the shape, removed the foil, cut a hole for the strobe, then taped two strips of tinfoil to the inside of the beauty dish and added another smaller dish to reflect the strobe light back into it.

Here's a sample image from a quick shoot tonight using the beauty dish, followed by an image of the dish itself. If you're interested, the rest of the shots are on my flickr, and some are posted in the G&N forums.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2328/2261799575_d245017794.jpg?v=0 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/perryge/2261799575/)

This photo was made using 1 reflector...and this:

[Jarrad]

I can't tell whether or not this is a joke

[JMHPhotography]

Ok... it seems to work ok. The results look pretty good, and that is the most important thing, but I don't mean this to be rude... I'm seeing a lot of irony that you actually refer to that as a "beauty" dish... that is U.G.L.Y. lol.

[e r y k]

lol, at least it seems to work quite well.

not something id bring to a shoot though :P

[Curtis N]

Ok as a prototype. You'll probably want to build something a bit more robust for durability.

[Perry Ge]

Hahaha it's not a joke, and obviously this isn't going to be used for any serious work. It was a result of pure boredom and I just wanted to show that you can get good results with really, really cheap crap. It literally took me no more than 4 minutes to put it together, but hey the results are nice, which is key.

I take no offense in you guys calling it ugly either, it IS, after all, it's a ghetto beauty dish :lol:.

[Connor P Price]

Well, as long as your taking no offense, this is one incredibly ugly diy light modifier. That being said, I think I'll go make one right now. haha. Your results actually turned out incredibly well. Should anyone use this type of thing in a serious or professional setting? Of course not, that goes without saying. However for those of us that just shoot friends, girlfriends, and other photog's most of the time this is a great way to spend the spare change under the couch cushions.

[_aravena]

Got to be the oddest and ugliest thing ever. Although if it was made stiff, I could see it doing well.

[Perry Ge]

I'm definitely going to make a nicer, more durable version of this - I just wanted to see what this kind of lighting mod would do and if it would work well, so I put it together really quickly. I have a bunch of tin foil for my hukkah so it's not like I had to pay anything extra to make it :lol:

[_aravena]

I want to make one now. But my fiancee will never pose for me anymore.

[Perry Ge]

Haha go for it, it takes about 5 minutes. I really like the catchlights it creates...