It’s a funny story

Sometimes it’s not what you expect

But that doesn’t always mean a bad thing.
Recently Geekoto released their new collapsable Beautydishes  
I’ve been shooting fashion/portraits for a long time and have worked with a lot of different beauty dishes, and this one is different.

For me a beauty dish is literally a dish in silver or white that gives a very harsh but nice light quality of light without hotspot due to the deflector that is placed in front of the flash tubes. It’s a very distinct look and to be honest the first time I saw the beauty dish from Geekoto it was not what I expected. But it ended up one of my favorite modifiers.

But of course I started to experiment and came to a totally different conclusion than “this is not a beauty dish”.
It’s actually a very interesting softbox.

First of all when you use the diffusion material you get a very nice evenly lit softbox without hotspot.
Use the grid and you will get a slightly darker center but it actually creates some really cool effects when you start to experiment a bit more.

The diffuser can be placed in two different positions which got me thinking.
What when we take off the diffusion material and use it like a beauty dish. Of course this doesn’t work because the deflector is still inside a softbox that focusses the light, compared to a shallow dish, but the effect is actually super cool.

By using the deflector and no diffusion material you get the “weird” lighting effect where the center is darker and the sides lighter.
by changing the position of the deflector you can change this effect.

But what about when placing the beauty dish next to the model and experiment with the placement of the deflector.
I think I never saw an effect like this without using flags or other kinds of tricks.
With the new Beautydish it’s super easy, and without a doubt a setup I’m going to be using a lot.

Don’t judge by name

One of the things I always try to do with new gear is to see in how many different ways it can be used.
My first impression was “not a beauty dish” but after these tests I can only say, this is one of the most versatile soft boxes on the market.

Place the diffuser and deflector for a super soft softbox.
Take out the deflector for a standard softbox
Use the grid to focus
Use it from the side and front with only the deflector for some cool lighting fall off effects.

And finally, how about using it without the diffuser, but with the deflector and the grid, indeed awesome effects on the background, but because the model is in the center, there is no shadow on the model due to the deflector. It’s so much fun to find so many uses for one light shaper.

You can get the Geekoto light shapers and strobes on our webshop.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, we always try to answer within 24 hours.

Workshops

Want to learn everything about light control?
Want to visit a workshop where it’s not just shooting a model with a fixed lighting setup, but see how the setup is build and adjusted to the taste of the group?
And of course learn how to work with poses, backgrounds, small sets, styling, retouching and a lot more…..

If this all sounds awesome, visit fotografie-workshops.nl and book your workshop.
If you don’t speak Dutch, no problem, let us know a few weeks in advance and we can switch the workshop to English.
Not possible to travel to The Netherlands?
We got you covered with our 1:1 online workshop.
We have a full streaming setup in our studio. 4 detail cameras and of course the retouching software so you can see every detail and of course ask questions during the day. Plus you get all the RAW files after the workshop.