Substitute Beauty Light
There is a large range of studio lighting available at the moment. There are also many ways of modifying the quality of its output with attachments or different reflectors. Recently, the so called Beauty Dish has become increasingly popular in the studio for all types of picture taking. The purpose of this piece is to show you how to improvise a substitute for one of these without having to go to the expense of buying one.
Starting with a standard soft box, the folding type that comes with a studio flash lighting kit, remove the front diffuser. It this state the unit will provide a fairly harsh quality of light. The results may be softened by preventing the direct light from the lamp or flash tube from reaching your subject. This can be done by suspending a piece of opal Perspex in front of the light from holes drilled in its corners with thin elastic under tension. An easy way of achieving this is to make four corner pieces out of thin sheet metal to provide anchor points for the elastic. This elastic is treaded through the hole on the metal hook to connect to the holes in the Perspex. The illustration here will show how this works. The easiest way to make the clips is to cut out the shapes suggested in the illustration, hold against the soft box corner, and bend the side tabs to the required angle. The pull of the elastic then holds them in place. As this addition only clips in place, it is easy to remove it when you want to return the soft box to its normal mode of use.
Having made this diffuser, the light may still be a bit hard so there is a further simple addition which can be made to improve things further. The standard soft box usually has a metallic inside; a simple insert cut from white paper will soften the light further. The illustration gives a rough idea of the required shape. Again it is only a matter of seconds to insert this into your unit. It is held in place by the elastic and Perspex arrangement and can be removed if not require equally easily.
One way of softening the output still further, is to take a piece of household cooking foil and wrap it around the Perspex diffuser. This now ensures that only reflected light reaches your subject.
In use, it is a matter of experimenting to see which of the above suggestions gives you the results you are after. You will find being able to control the quality of your studio lighting out-put increases the creative possibilities of your work. The modifications to the light that have been described give you several ways of doing this without adding further expense.
Examples
This is taken using just a single light modified as described here.Both the opal Perspex and the paper liner were in place. No reflectors were used so the result depends entirely on the one unit. The shadow behind the suject shows the degree of softness that is produced by the light in this form.
Same lighting unit as the previous shot.This time the cooking foil is used to block any direct light by covering the opal Perspex. The background has been deliberately over lit by the use of a second light. It was in fact yellow but now appears white. Because the studio here is small and painted white, a certain amount of light is bouncing from the background and softening the shadows to a greater degree than in the first shot.
For this final shot, the lighting set-up is exactly the same as before except that the intensity of the single light on the background has been reduced. Now the exposure for the yellow background is within the camera’s range, it records correctly. Because an even softer over all lighting was required, reflectors were placed in front and to both sides of the subject. All these pictures show how by making quite subtle alteations to the output of your lights, it is possible to vary the final result in several different ways.
mike anthony wrote:
Hi,
I have taken many shots of your models face and not one of them is a quarter as good as your shots. well done.
posted on 18/05/2010