Make a Beauty Dish for Studio Lighting

Or, How To Whip Up A Little Something In The Kitchen For The Studio

Occasionally in my web surfing I come across things that strike me as quite clever.  One such example is a homemade beauty dish I stumbled upon on lifehacker.com.  Well, actually the lifehacker page was really the entry to a rabbit hole I eventually went down, that lead to  David Tejada’s blog for commercial photographers, where he references Tyler Burk‘s instructions for this clever little item on Flickr.  Such is life in cyberspace.

Okay, so why do you want to know how to make a homemade beauty dish anyway?  Because they can turn your camera’s dedicated flash unit into a stunningly fantastic piece of advanced lighting equipment. And because you can make this version for approximately $15-$20, vs $175-$365 for one like this Dynalite Model.

If you’re still not convinced, check out the two images in this post by Evan Romine, both lit with a beauty dish.  Good stuff, no?

If you would like to read more, check out these articles:

High Key Studio Lighting – Tutorial

Photographing Young Children With Low Key Lighting – Tutorial

Studio Lighting for Headshots – Tutorial

How to Set Up a Photo Booth in Your Home

How to Photograph Large Groups in the Studio

Photographing Babies, Birth to One Year – Tips and Techniques

Using Bold Color in Portraiture – Tips and Techniques

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

StudioonaShoestring.com runs on the Genesis Framework

Genesis Framework

The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Genesis provides the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go.

Check out the incredible features and the selection of designs. It's that simple - start using Genesis now!

4 comments

  1. nice find – Going to try this one out over the weekend and snap some up. Your my hero as always!

  2. deborahwolfe says

    Hi Chris,

    I’m always so glad to hear from you. Hey, if you do make this little gadget and shoot some cool stuff, I’d be happy to feature a shot or two here on the blog. That’s what it’s all about, doing real stuff in the real world and sharing it with real people.

    Have a GREAT one!

  3. Well I spent all day saturday obsessing over the pan to use, went to like 5 different stores, but finally got one. This saturday is DIY day. My mates doing it too and has sent me shots of his advanced progress, lol it’s a real race too!

    I’d love to post some shots!
    chris x

  4. deborahwolfe says

    Hi Chris,

    This is just the kind of thing I love to hear about. I think it’s fantastic that you and your mate are in a bit of a challenge! Can’t wait to see the no doubt fabulous results!