3 Beauty Dish Accessories | Inside Fashion and Beauty Photography with Lindsay Adler

A *beauty dish* is a staple of many studio photographers’ lighting kits. This popular modifier creates a soft and flattering quality of light but with a bit more ‘pop’ and contrast than you get with a softbox. This versatile light modifier can transform with the 3 accessories covered in this video. A beauty dish can become more concentrated, specular, or even softer— it's about knowing the right accessories to use! My Favorite Beauty Dish Accessories: (1) Sock (aka Diffuser): Creates a softer quality of light and less specularity to the image. This is great for a bit more flattering light on the skin with rough textures or excess shine. The material for a sock is similar to the type of material in the front of a softbox that is intended to soften, smooth, and spread light. If you don’t have a sock, try a diffusion filter to soften the light. It will have a similar effect and it attaches simply with gaffers tape. *Note: Profoto offers a single diffuser for their beauty dish, though other brands have diffusion that is thicker/thinner to allow you to control the specularity of the light. (2) Grid: A 25-degree grid helps you add contrast and drama to your light. In particular, it allows you to control the spread of light. Adding a grid reduces the area of coverage of the light, and makes the light fall off faster (making the background darker). This is a great way to layer your light by separately controlling the illumination on the subject and background. (3) Frosted Plate: Typically a beauty dish will have a solid white reflective plate. Here we are switching out to a frosted glass plate. This takes your beauty dish and gives it a bit more punch. You’ll have more contrast and specularity. With a white beauty dish, you will notice more specularity. With a silver beauty dish, you’ll notice a bit smoother gradient in the quality of light. What is great about these accessories is that you can take a tool you already own (a beauty dish) and make it more v