Hey everyone
I just got the Alien Bees 22" Silver High Output Beauty Dish the other day and was curious to see if the statements made about them were true.
(on their website)
The 22HOBD is designed to project a narrow 45° beam angle, with about six times the efficiency of a white dish. This allows for lighting subjects from greater distances with low power flash units, and allows using the reflector with or without the included direct-light blocker.
Attaching the included diffusion sock converts the 22HOBD into the equivalent of a round softbox with very even coverage and outstanding evenness across the face of the diffusion fabric. This widens the angle of coverage to about 150° and lowers the output by about 1 1/2 f-stops. It also minimizes the specularity and results in approximately the same photographic result as a conventional white beauty dish with diffusion sock.
So, today I decided to do a few test, nothing fancy and mind you I normally don't do these types of things, but I thought it would be interesting to see the kind of output I get from the HOBD using an AB400.
My set up was quite simple, I had the beauty dish about 2.5ft away from the subject being metered using a Sekonic L-358. I fired 5 shots for each series. My findings were as follows:
As you can see, compared to using a 48" silver umbrella or the 7" reflector the dish does provide a fairly high output result even with the AB400. The diffusion sock results also are fairly accurate. I've yet to use in a real world situation but I hope to some time soon. Hopefully I have some time to take pics of my wife this week and I can post the reults. Unfortunately this is my first beauty dish so I have nothing to compare it to.
Anyway, like I said nothing fancy or in-depth, but it does what it says it will do, for that I'm pleased
