Beauty Dish vs. Softbox

Hi Everyone,

I'll be photographing dogs for the shelter my wife volunteers at; for now, the dogs will be brought to our house. I'd like to get the get the best technical "wow factor" in-camera without resorting to post processing (since I'm not really good at it yet). I define "wow factor" as sharp-appearing images, good contrast and color saturation with the hairs on the dog's coat clearly defined.

I've already done one session using a softbox and have to say the result looks fine but I'm wondering if a beauty dish would be better since it provides, I believe, a somewhat harder light. I'm thinking that a softbox is better for peoople images but animals aren't vain and don't worry about wrinkles, lines, etc. Also, a BD is far less bulky than a softbox.

The room I'm using is about 8'x12' with a 7.8' ceiling. I have 3 AlienBees B800s and use both a white and light-gray roll paper backgrounds. I also have a set of Buff honeycomb grids for the ABs.

For what I want to acheive, would simply shooting without any modifier be a better solution? If a BD is the way to go, would the silver or white be best?

Thanks for reading and appreciate any suggestions.

Start by taking the diffusion panel off the soft box.
I presume that the soft box is within one to 1 1/2 its diagonal of the subject.
If so, another option is to remove the diffusion panel and move the light back.

All of these options will increase the visual contrast.

Thanks dmward; the room is too small to move back much further but I'll give it a try.