Exploring a New Kind of Light

The first light I used for portraiture was a reflector with the strobe in the center.  Wider reflectors produced light with softer shadows.  Most of the light came directly out of the center flash tube and never bounced before striking the subject.  Even with a large reflector, the light produced a sharp transition between light and shadow.  This light was fine for the young and beautiful, but it also emphasized wrinkles and flaws when they were present.

Portrait photographers like the kind of light that comes through north facing window.  The sun never shines directly through these windows so it cannot  produce any sharp shadows.  Photographers emulate this type of light with large diffusers like Soft Boxes.  The light from the strobe bounces in many directions before leaving through a large opening in front.  

Recently photographers have rediscovered a new kind of light.  This light is hard and soft at the same time.  This light can be created in a light modifier called a "Beauty Dish."  The beauty dish I purchased is typical.  It  is a shallow reflector with a 22 inch opening.  If you look at it from the front you cannot see the flash tube of the strobe because a metal reflector covers it.  Light from the flash hits the backside of the center cover and bounces  to the sides of the dish where it changes direction again in order to leave the front of the reflector.  The result is a 22 inch light source that produces very soft light coming from many directions. 

I mounted a 12 inch rod on the top of a light stand and positioned it so that one end of the rod was touching the wall.  I placed a beauty dish 45 degrees to the side.  With this setup, a hard light source will produce a distinct shadow on the wall and a soft light source  will produce little or no shadow as the rod becomes more distant from the wall.

In the photo below, the beauty dish is aimed directly at the light stand.  Notice how the shadow spreads and then completely disappears.  This head-on light is very soft.

In this photo, I turned the beauty dish to the side so the light stand and rod receive hard light from the flash tube and soft light from the rest of the beauty dish.  Notice how visible the shadow is now.  The shadow is still softer than that of a point light source, but it definitely harder than it was when the beauty dish was directly aimed at the subject.

When I purchased the beauty dish, I also a grid that allows me to control the light by limiting it to a smaller area.  As you can see from the first photo, the resulting light is still soft when the light is aimed directly at the subject.    The second photos shows that the light stays soft to the very edge.  this setup does not produce light that is hard and soft at the same time.

My beauty dish came with an optional white cover.  The resulting light is soft when aimed directly at the subject and remains soft as the light is feathered.  The light covers a much wider area than it did with the grid.  

I've seen excellent presentations that show a model photographed with a wide variety of lighting equipment.   When I look at these tiny printed illustrations, I cannot perceive the subtle differences. 

This exercise didn't teach me how to use the beauty dish.  It did provide the first step toward mastering  the simultaneous hard and soft quality of light it produces.  I also learned that I'm wasting my time if I try to achieve this effect with either the grid or cover attached to the beauty dish.  These options only useful if I need a soft light source.