FotodioxPro Beauty Dish 22" (56cm) kit with Honeycomb Grid (50 Degree), for Bowens Gemini Standard, Classica Powerpack, R Series, Rx Series, and Pro Series Strobe Flash Light, Beautydish

A beauty dish isn't something you need right away when you enter strobing, but a lot of strobists love. I decided to try it out and I do like how it does for close up skin tone.While if you are very careful with a regular umbrella you might be able to get somewhat similar results. I also have a  Cowboystudio 400w Studio Monolight  and i have a 7" reflector on it with an umbrella. The reflector helps focus the light and no stray it everywhere with a bare umbrella. The Beauty dish is even more focus you righting even more. Add the 22" honeycomb and it become a snook. Another thing it does is cut down on the hotspots. I find the umbrella to product too much hotspots.Pluses:+If you do a one light setup the beauty dish does a very dramatic skin rendering.+Less hotspot, so you get better smoother skin tone rendering.+very focus lighting, even more so with the honeycomb grid.Negative:-The 22" dish is big, somewhat pricey for a simple product too.-a power hack. You need a powerful monolight. With normal power on a monomlight with shoot thru umbrella I have the power level at 35/60. The dish I have it at 45/60 or at a full 60/60 sometime. That is because the light is reflected 2x. A shoot thru umbrella is diffused by the umbrella. the reflective umbrella is reflected 1x.Overall I like the effects of a beauty dish, very dramatic. I realized the shoot thru umbrella can produce too much hotspot if not placed right for close up. Might consider a large full body softbox is you are interested in a even full body lighting. Fotodioux sent me a return item which I can tell by the scratched and some wear at the mount. They used a black sharpie to cover so wear also. I email them and they were friendly and made an offer.

First thing I noticed when I pulled this beauty dish out was the dish's thickness. I expected a thinner gauge dish that I would have to baby. I was pleasantly surprised. The dish is constructed with a good gauge aluminum and has a good balance of weight and sturdiness.The honeycomb is also well made and it feels like it will hold up for years.The only reason I didn't give this dish 5 stars was that I had to do a slight modification to assemble the center reflector.There are two layers of metal at the reflector offset rod mounting points. One layer has threaded holes for the reflector offset rods and the other layer has cut outs for clear access to the threaded holes.On my dish, the layers weren't aligned perfectly and one of the offset rods wouldn't thread on because of a clearance issue with the cut out layer. To make the rod fit, I had to use a Dremel tool and grind back about 1/32" on the cut out, so the rod would screw into the threaded hole. After that alteration, everything went together easily and I am very satisfied with the dish.

I wanted a beauty dish for my Bowens mount strobe and some are cheaper, but end up being more expensive when you add the grid. This looks well made, and comes with a sock and a grid. Plus, the one I got was painted white on the inside, which is what I wanted. It was hard to tell what I would get because the pictures show what looks like silver paint on some of the pics. I set it up and got some great pics on the first use.My only complaint is the the speedring doesn't get tight enough so when I mount it to my strobe, I have to grab the actual speedring to twist it to lock, instead of being able to just turn the entire beauty dish. I'm going to try adding some rubber washers and that should fix it. Other than that, I'm happy.

This my first Beauty Dish. I'm astounded by this light modifier for three reasons:1. Price is reasonable.2. Build quality is solid and lightweight3. Light output is excellent and contrastyExtra reasons: It has a sock and grid.I use this BD with a Flashpoint Softbox Adapter for Shoe-Mount Flash. Both devices uses Bowen's adapter, but I'm using them with my Canon 430 EXII and Yongnuo 560 III flashes. My very first two shots with this Fotodiox BD with grid attached already gave me perfect shot! Oh yeah I use a light meter by the way.There's a certain look with BD that you can't get with a softbox. I haven't tested the sock yet.This is a must buy! Don't forget to get that Flashpoint adapter as well.I believe you can use this other light sources, i.e AlienBees, but you need to order the right adapter for the BD and the right Shoe Mount.

Definite hot spot in the the middle with a brighter ring near the edge with over 1.5 stop of difference. This is not bad for outdoor work when photographing animals but i would never use it in studio on people ever again. It's just not well designed for professional level work. You get what you pay for.

OK so a good value. It works well for reasonable price. It comes in different sizes and comes with a grid and a diffuser sock; no need to buy extra stuff for it. I like the Fotodiox products. I like their light modifiers because I can easily swap out their mounts to use with different light brands.

It’s my first one, and I don’t have a frame of reference.But I will say that this one works.Pro:Build - Comes with grid - Comes with diffusion sock - Sturdy metal constructionLight Quality: - Angle of grid is tight - light is even - creates beautiful t zone lightingConsBuild: - heavy, (The may all be this way) - doesn’t seal completely in the rear, and light leaks. (This doesn’t impact image quality and is more of an observation)

Build quality is really bad for the price. the speedring came of by itself in the middle of a shoot (pictured), and the whole dish felt to the ground making it bad dinged. Plus the design is also stupid. The 3 pins that hold the internal reflector pushes the speedring on the back and leaves a ding mark (pictured) on the speedring. the speedring is also unbelievably light and brittle, I can bend it with my hand, which makes no sense. Never buying any fotodiox product again. This thing should not cost more than 35$.

Where to start. Look through the pictures I've attached. The bowens mount connector was dirty and had a piece of mouse feces stuck to it. Thanks for mailing me mice feces, Amazon Prime! The deflector that sits directly in front of your strobe isn't the proper fit for the rods supplied to mount it on. You have to force and bend them to get it to line up. The bowens mount isn't even perfectly flat. I mean that's something you should get right 100%. Furthermore, as you see if you pay close attention in one of the pics...the little screw in rods that hold the small deflector actually protrude out the back, and further prevent the bowens mount from sitting flat against the beauty dish.Overall the grid looks very good and I was happy for just a moment when I unpacked it, but then I saw that it was damaged. And on the front side too. On its own that might not be a huuuuuge problem, but considering it's just one problem after another....it really starts to bother you. Then I put on the diffuser sock. Surprisingly, it fit on there and didn't have any problems! Or did it! Because this manufacturer never fails to disappoint! Because the moment you try to mount the grid on the beauty plate, you realize that once again there is a size issue with connectors not lining up properly. This causes you to have to put an extreme amount of pressure to clip the grid on. Again...this on its own wouldn't be a problem....but it IS a problem when you realize that this pressure is being applied to the diffuser sock, and after removing/attaching it a few times, it WILL tear through the material.The dish itself looks good. And seems to work pretty well in preliminary testing. The grid, if it weren't damaged, is actually one of the nicer quality grids I've seen on these Chinese brand products. Overall, this had the potential to be a 5/5 product, but really poor design and quality control from the manufacturer, along with the free bonus mice feces, leave me no choice but to give it a 1/5.