Event: Hanukkah Celebration

Hanukkah concert photos are published here.  If downloading photos is too much hassle for you - ask around - I passed along a couple of CDs.

Study in Dishes. New Flash Mount.

A new mount cost me $2.37 in parts from a big box store.  All the thumb screws were reused from the original mount.  New mount designs allows for shallow and deep insertion of the flash into the dish.  Shallow is still deeper than the original mount allowed for.  This does not help the quality of the light much though.  On the other hand deep insertion position (flash just about 1".5" from the internal reflector) creates a nice focused light pattern which I love.  Installation of the grid results in a smaller light spot yet.  Diffusing sock softens the light as expected.

Study in Dishes

Nowadays it is all about light control for me. My first modifiers - umbrellas off course - were spilling light all over the place.  I still resort to umbrellas for location shoots if the spill does not affect the picture.  My current studio favorite though is a cross of umbrella and a softbox.
Therefore when I started looking for a beauty dish, a grid was a must-have.  After all how else can you control the spill, right?  I did some research and settled on this eBay package: 16" Beauty Dish With Grid for Speedlite. Today I received it and learned that this is a Cowboy Studio product.  Indeed they have similar thing on their web site.

The first thing I did was to examine the light pattern under different flash zooms, with no fabric diffuser or grid installed.  I used both normal and recessed position for the front diffuser.