Joel Grimes Shows How to Use a Beauty Dish in an Outdoor Lifestyle Setting

The humble beauty dish is a studio favorite but it is not often the first modifier most reach for when heading outdoors. Most beauty dishes are not all that portable and can add significant weight to your kit. With a few collapsible beauty dishes currently on the market you can now easily take that gorgeous light with you anywhere. Joel Grimes shows you how to make the most out of using a beauty dish in an outdoor setting.

For this demonstration Grimes chooses to use the Westcott Rapid Box Beauty Dish. It is a collapsible 24-inch beauty dish which makes it an ideal choice for shooting outdoors. Grimes decided to create a typical lifestyle themed photoshoot where the model is edge lit by the sun and a strobe is used to fill in the shadows. He shows you how to keep the background light and airy while retaining those gorgeous qualities of a beauty dish on the model's face.

If you are not currently using a beauty dish it might be something worth considering in your arsenal.

[via SLRLounge]

Peter House's picture

Peter House is a commercial fashion photographer from Toronto, Canada. He shoots over 10,000 pieces of clothing every year for a variety of lookbooks. Clients range from small local boutiques to international brands such as Target, Winners, and Sears. In addition to that Peter runs one of the most popular rental studio's in the Toronto area.

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9 Comments

It's nice but you don't learn anything knew or anything at all...It's just an add for the beauty dish :)

Well, Romain... It's not all about you, nor is it all about me, I am sure somebody learned something.

Hard not to agree with your sentence but compared to things like that, it's quite short
https://fstoppers.com/bts/getting-most-out-your-modifiers-49112

A Beauty Dish with a front diffuser is not much different than a soft box of the same size.

It's different.

Not really PLUS you dont have to use the diffusser. I actually use it a lot of the time without it.

We can always learn something from the pros, I appreciate this. I think the odd thing I find now is that he mentions the shutter speed limit/barrier being 1/200s - but with so many new and very affordable lights out these days - specifically by Godox - of which I own three Wistro AD600s -, I have no shutter speed limit. I can shoot High speed sync without even thinking about it. I have shot at 1/4000 shutter speeds in midday sun with a strobe, all I do is dial up my shutter speed, and whether it's one or all three lights, they automatically read my shutter speed and without any intervention from me, move into HSS mode. No need for ND or any old style limits.

Doesn't the camera limit the shutter speed? If I shoot above my shutter speed on a 5Dmk2 (which is only 1/125th), I see a dark edge on the bottom of the frame.

Not at all.... High speed sync lights are meant to work with high shutter speeds. My only shutter speed limit is my camera which tops out at 1/4000. I can shoot any shutter speed I like. The light I mentioned is an HSS light.