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I decided to finally build this thing. Gotta love speedlights and their lack of light modifiers, but then again it's always been a love/hate relationship Hate the limitation, though love the Internet and the abundance of resources to help me get around this.

Anyway, found a tutorial online a few months ago and bought the parts to make a beauty dish for my speedlight and never got around to it until tonight. The following are pics of the incompleted product. I just have to glue and screw the thing together so it doesn't fall apart and paint the inside white.

Parts I used:

- Plastic pot (from K-mart)
- CD/DVD spindle
- Plastic gutter pipe
- Circular blind spot mirror
- Matte white paint
- Matte black paint
- Glue
- Screws and washers

One thing I want to try and get right is the light distribution. Seems to be a bit concentrated on some spots, but that could be due to the way I had the flash inserted.

Will post sample pics of it when I finish tomorrow.

Silver spray-paint may be more reflective? Would love to see results..

very nice wayne, i have seen this somewhere too. how will you mount it, will the weight of it be attached to the flash head?

perhaps consider experimenting with different length/height CDR covers, to increase the distance of the mirror to the head, thus changing the balance between light shooting out, and that bounced back inside the beauty dish.

have you noticed much softness difference if you has a stoffen difuser cap on?

I don't use the Stoffen diffuser and have subquently lost it so can't do a direct comparison.

Here are some comparison pics.

1/200, f5.6, iso100, 1/4 (beauty dish)


1/200, f11, iso100, 1/4 (bare)

that is a beautiful stussy doll!

looks like about 1.5 stops, but nice and soft.

You haven't opened your Canon 5 box

i was in a $2 shop today at lunch time, and thought of your dish when I saw some cheap stainless steel mixing bowls (shop in Sandy). one is shallow,about 10cm, and about 40cm diameter, got me thinking to attempt a ringlight, thinking a multi SB-800 design(perhaps 4 holes every 90 degrees for positioning different lighting effects) .

wonder if I am smart enough to get it to use the nikon CLS for convenience (thinking cord to SB800-1 and wireless to the others) perhaps if I drill a hole in the dish so the CLS can comms through the ring light cavity...


has anyone metered an SB800 at 1m?

now I gotta make the thing

Oz_Beachside wrote:wonder if I am smart enough to get it to use the nikon CLS for convenience

Is CLS smart enough for this? I suspect not.

Seriously, this would present some serious challenges for your Nikon hardware. The flash heads need to use their sensors to determine what their output is, as well as for comms. While a cable will work in terms of comms, the dish hardware will physically interfere with your sensors' ability to accurately read light output and input, and you would need to take this into account with your design.

I agree with Gary, but, manual should work well though, Would love to see how the design process and results go.

Being a klutz with this sort of thing I love seeing people's home made softboxes etc

gstark wrote:

Oz_Beachside wrote:wonder if I am smart enough to get it to use the nikon CLS for convenience

Is CLS smart enough for this? I suspect not.

Seriously, this would present some serious challenges for your Nikon hardware. The flash heads need to use their sensors to determine what their output is, as well as for comms. While a cable will work in terms of comms, the dish hardware will physically interfere with your sensors' ability to accurately read light output and input, and you would need to take this into account with your design.

yeah, thought as much, I can only really see myself using it in manual anyway...

i'll have a crack this weekend.