What type of modifier is used for these shots? Beautydish?

BrandonSi wrote in post #12043107
One of the reasons people don't get the Kacey is because of the expense.. It's still cheaper (price wise) than the Mola stuff, but it doesn't come with a bracket.. Just the bracket is ~$140 if I remember correctly. Check on his site, I think they make brackets for everything, especially speedlites. It's quality equipment, just not for my budget.

yeah, expensive is an understatement. i looked at their grid and its over $100 dollars just for the grid!

i mean, c'mon bro... wow

i'm just going to stick with my Cheeta 16 silver dish and go from there. I think i'm overthinking this a bit, without even seeing the results of the Cheeta...

anlenke wrote in post #12041691
I think, if you pull the flash away from the center, you're going to have less hitting the reflective area of the dish, not filling it as much.

i'm a little confused. i thought you said before to position the speedlight right at the edge of the rim of the BD. but this statement above seems like your stating to push it further into the BD.

can you please expound? i'm trying to get max spread of light.

m.shalaby wrote in post #12042969
Thanks for the detailed info - you da man.

For my goals (at the moment), I have contrasty/fashion like shots in mind - like what you did, like this: http://blog.americanpe​yote.com …nt/uploads/kace​y-bd-1.jpg

(not closeups of beauty/skin shots). So perhaps the silver is the way to go....?
I dont' know. I know what I'll do, I'll prolly be my good ol' OCD self and get both, lol...

You can do that shot with small softbox with a grid IMHO. Don't need no Beauty dish. But that is besides the point.

I have the kacey dish. It can attach to his dual speedlite or signle speedlite bracket or you buy an adapter ring to attach to AB or Elinchrom lights (maybe others also). You can buy softbox ring to use speedlite brackets with softbox. The bowens mount thing from cheetah is defnitely cheaper option. I have only seen eBay beauty dishes and Kacey dish is much much better construction. But the end result in pictures might not be that different. One main thing for kacey dish is that you can use two speedlites if you want to. No other beauty dish let you do that.

Sorry the for the confusion, in not talking about how far to pull back/push forward, I wasn't very clear.

If the speedlight is too close to the center, the light is not going to spread enough, and you'll lose some of the power and may not "fill" the beauty dish. Same goes for the having the speedlite too far away. Start with the flash just inside the mouth of the beauty dish, and with a standard zoom on the flash if you have a flash that can zoom, and give it a try for that beauty dish. I think you'll find it'll spread the light beautifully when you get it setup.

Someone else had mentioned a grid, which is definitely a good idea; they give you even another different look. I did a little comparison of an umbrella, beauty dish, and gridded beauty dish about a month ago here: http://www.flickr.com …otographiques/5​428434918/

Don't mean to self-promote, but hopefully you find it helpful. Also I'm sorry I'm not a beautiful woman, I'm sure everyone would enjoy that much more

You'll be just fine with your Cheetah!

anlenke wrote in post #12043616
Sorry the for the confusion, in not talking about how far to pull back/push forward, I wasn't very clear.

If the speedlight is too close to the center, the light is not going to spread enough, and you'll lose some of the power and may not "fill" the beauty dish. Same goes for the having the speedlite too far away. Start with the flash just inside the mouth of the beauty dish, and with a standard zoom on the flash if you have a flash that can zoom, and give it a try for that beauty dish. I think you'll find it'll spread the light beautifully when you get it setup.

Someone else had mentioned a grid, which is definitely a good idea; they give you even another different look. I did a little comparison of an umbrella, beauty dish, and gridded beauty dish about a month ago here: http://www.flickr.com …otographiques/5​428434918/

Don't mean to self-promote, but hopefully you find it helpful. Also I'm sorry I'm not a beautiful woman, I'm sure everyone would enjoy that much more

You'll be just fine with your Cheetah!

Thanks, thats clears it up. I'll just wind up doing my own testing i guess.

For the original pictures I posted in this thread, could you give a breakdown of the set-up? Grid? No Grid? BD distance from Subject, ect...

Thanks bud. again, I ask all these questions becuase I admire your work so much

Absolutely.

For the first image, I had an Alien Bee B800 strobe in the 16" silver beauty dish, boomed with the manfrotto 420B stand. The light was about 18 inches over my head, and about a foot off-axis camera left, and a little less than 2 feet closer to the camera. It was bare (no sock, no grid), so the light would be just as you see it. Beauty dishes can tend to have a little bit of an edge (meaning the edges of the dish give off a little more light than the center), which I used to help myself in this image, wearing a dark hat/sweater, that lit them up a little more...my other beauty dish has nearly no edge difference, so it varies from dish to dish. The color in that one looks the way it does because I was playing with my white balance and using an inexpensive ND filter to affect color.

The other two were very similar to the first (and identical to each other). Also boomed on the same stand, only about 2 feet higher than subject, basically on axis (a smidge camera left), and about 3 feet in front of subject. The increased distance from the subject gives more even lighting (less rapid fall off) thanks to the inverted square law...

anlenke wrote in post #12043722
Absolutely.

For the first image, I had an Alien Bee B800 strobe in the 16" silver beauty dish, boomed with the manfrotto 420B stand. The light was about 18 inches over my head, and about a foot off-axis camera left, and a little less than 2 feet closer to the camera. It was bare (no sock, no grid), so the light would be just as you see it. Beauty dishes can tend to have a little bit of an edge (meaning the edges of the dish give off a little more light than the center), which I used to help myself in this image, wearing a dark hat/sweater, that lit them up a little more...my other beauty dish has nearly no edge difference, so it varies from dish to dish. The color in that one looks the way it does because I was playing with my white balance and using an inexpensive ND filter to affect color.

The other two were very similar to the first (and identical to each other). Also boomed on the same stand, only about 2 feet higher than subject, basically on axis (a smidge camera left), and about 3 feet in front of subject. The increased distance from the subject gives more even lighting (less rapid fall off) thanks to the inverted square law...

thanks once again! i really want to get into lighting. right now all I have going is a Strangers Project i'm working on... but I'm dying to get into some real creative lighting like your examples.

thanks bro

No worries at all...It sounds like you're already well on your way to lighting...enjoy the dish ...and thanks for getting me sucked into this forum, I've spent far too much time on POTN already

BTW the Strangers project has some absolutely beautiful images of it,I had a chance to go through it last night, really, truly impressive work (and a great project)!

anlenke wrote in post #12043792
No worries at all...It sounds like you're already well on your way to lighting...enjoy the dish ...and thanks for getting me sucked into this forum, I've spent far too much time on POTN already

BTW the Strangers project has some absolutely beautiful images of it,I had a chance to go through it last night, really, truly impressive work (and a great project)!

thank you

anlenke wrote in post #12043792
No worries at all...It sounds like you're already well on your way to lighting...enjoy the dish ...and thanks for getting me sucked into this forum, I've spent far too much time on POTN already

BTW the Strangers project has some absolutely beautiful images of it,I had a chance to go through it last night, really, truly impressive work (and a great project)!

Hah.. Welcome to the fun.. I think we all spend too much time here..

And agreed, the Strangers project is really amazing..!

BrandonSi wrote in post #12044541
Hah.. Welcome to the fun.. I think we all spend too much time here..

And agreed, the Strangers project is really amazing..!

you can say that again! lol....

and thanks for the comment about the project.

16" Silver vs. 22" Silver

So, sigh, I'm still stuck between these two size dishes. 16" silver vs. 22" silver

My goal is to get very 'dramatic', high contrasty, shots.
I'm not looking to do beauty type facials/head & shoulder shots. - I'm looking to do fashion style shots of full body or 3/4 body with very dramatic/contrasty lighting.

anlenke posted the 16" would work better for this becasue the 22 is a bigger source, and more spread, less light fall off, so a softer light overall due to its size. (that makes sense to me) - and i like the results he got.

but

i have this nagging feeling that "bigger is better", and I want the 22. that and most of the work I see everywhere is done with a 22 and i like those results too.

can anyone chime in on this?

Perhaps a 22 with a grid will give similar results to that of the 16 with no grid?

Its so tough making decisions without being able to actually use and test the equipment! ARG!

^ nobody?

22" will still give you dramatic lighting. It will still have fall off. If you're primarily going to do full body images, it may be more along the lines of what you're looking for. Don't do this to yourself though...you already ordered the 16" right? Try it out

...if you really don't think you like the fall off, and want a little softer light source, then the 22" would be a great choice. If you want to have both and you can afford it, by all means

BD's can also make a pretty good hairlight, so you could use it as that if you don't want to return one, etc...

If you've already ordered the 16, just stick with it and try it out.. You can always re-sell it if you think you need the 22".. You might want to check around for local photographers too and see if they would let you borrow their 22", or just come out to a shoot with them and try it out yourself.

I think you'll be happy with the 16.. Going from no beauty dish to a 16" is a huge leap.. 16" to 22" is a tiny step up.