Comments on: How does that beauty dish adjust anyway?

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:25:41 +0000

Great solution to this problem, Tom. I’ve incorporated this feature into my DIY beauty dish design – thanks for the inspiration!

Here’s a link to my design:
http://ishootshows.com/2010/02/09/music-photographers-diy-beauty-dish/

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:52:47 +0000

John,

I did a little checking and found that I used #20 bolts for the parts that connect to the shoe mounting bracket. The others I’m afraid I don’t know. I did try and use the smallest (thinnest) I could find to mount the reflector to reduce the amount of flash blocked. Hope this helps!

Tom

By: John

John — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:59:49 +0000

What size and length bolts do you need? I saw what was written on the material list, but it didn’t make sense to me.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:53:41 +0000

Nice work! You’ve made a very nice Beautydish!

By: Steve L

Steve L — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:52:11 +0000

Well, inspired by all the posts related to the DIY beauty dish.. I decided to make one for myself as well.. Just thought to share with all of you my way of doing that and hope everyone can benefit from it…

http://www.themoment2cherish.com/DIY-Beauty-Dish/

Cheers
Steve..

By: Pixinfo.com blog - Blog Archive - Körvaku, beauty dish - mire jó? hogy csináljunk?

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:15:40 +0000

[...] meg” a vakuval a tálat. (spottr élő adásban készített egyet) A Light And Pixels is szépen összefoglalta, képekkel illusztrálta a házikészítésű verzióját, majd vizsgálta a [...]

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:58:22 +0000

Tom,
I finished my light dish tonight and I started playing around with it. My only problem is, I’ve never used a beauty dish before and I’m not sure what I’m looking for when I adjust it. I have absolutely no dead spot regardless of how close in or far out my mirror is, however adjusting has a tremendous effect on the amount of light that the dish gives off. The closer the mirror is to the flash, the more light I lose. I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be going for here. Do you have any suggestions?

Also, my dish has a much wider flash radius than yours, which I really didn’t expect. But even this, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or bad because I don’t know what’s expected.

Any thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:14:45 +0000

I actually did use silicone, I just mistakenly said caulk because it’s in a caulk tube. My next attempt used superglue, which seems to work well enough, but the problem with superglue is that (as always) it dries so incredibly fast, it’s difficult to apply the glue fast enough, and still have time to set it. I managed, and I still think it’s an improvement over the silicone, but it would have been nice with something that sets a tiny bit slower. Maybe rubber cement?

I also did a little homework on the CD issue realized that the manufactured CD works even better than I initially thought. They’re built in a very different manner than burnable CDs and just seem much more suitable for this project. And I’m sure everyone has a few old CDs sitting around the house that probably should have been thrown out years ago. Personally, I finally found something useful to do with an Amy Grant CD!

I do have some photos and will take some more and send them along when I finish up. Still waiting on 1 part to arrive in the mail from Lon at FlashZebra before I can finish.

By the way, if you’re looking for a bowl to use for this project, I found mine here – http://www.kitchensupplydirect.com/370-WSB-18.html

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:47:39 +0000

Jim,

Excellent input. Thank you for your observations. I used silicone rather than caulk. I think they are different but you may be right about the use of superglue. For CDs I used a pretty cheap off-brand version and it drilled okay. I hope others will provide input like you. If you have photos from your dish let me know, I’d like to see them!

Cheers,
Tom

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:10:33 +0000

I have taken a stab at building my own beauty dish using these plans, but I have hit a couple snags that I thought I’d share.

The first snag I hit was drilling through the CD/door stop. I didn’t have any issues with CD cracking (I took it slow), however the problem I had was once my drill got through the plastic of the CD, and reached the shiny, paper thin reflective material on the CD. I’m referring to thin layer of reflective material that you’re writing on when you label a CD, and the flip side is actually where the data is stored on a CD. As soon as my drill hit this layer of material (not sure what to call it) it started tearing it away from the CD. After having drilled 3 holes, the damage was too bad to salvage this attempt. Maybe it was simply my brand of CD (Maxwell). I’m going to try again, but I have a feeling factory pressed CD (non burnable) would be better. This will also give a better reflection because they are more mirror-like, and because even the “clear” burnable CD’s often have a very slight tint of green or blue to the plastic.

The other problem I discovered was with using the caulk to seal the mirror/CD/wall door stop. Once I scrapped my 1st attempt with drilling the CD, I had to pry apart the mirror/CD/doorstop so I could try to re-use the mirror and doorstop. What I noticed is that, despite letting the caulk dry for about a week, only the caulk at the edges dried. Everything in the middle was still as wet as the day I applied it. I assume this is because it had no air touching it to dry it out. As this seal isn’t bearing much weight, it was still strong enough to hold it together with the small amount of seal it had around the edges, but I was thinking next time it might be better to use super glue, or something that starts drying much faster.

Hope this helps!