Fomei 43 cm beauty dish and two styles
As almost everyone probably knows by now, my favorite kind of light is the type you can get from a 70 cm beauty dish, most often with a honeycomb grid attached. You will find plenty of photos I took with this modifier. I created almost my entire portfolio with it. Last year, I had a chance to do a shoot with a Fomei dish of a much smaller diameter, 43 cm, although its design was different from typical cheap Chinese models.
This modifier appears in the manufacturer's catalog as the "DFS - 43 cm soft reflector", so it is not explicitly called a beauty dish. It looks more like a standard reflector in XXL size. It has the aforementioned diameter of 43 cm and a different profile, shaped more like a reflector than a beauty dish. Inside, however, there is a deflector characteristic of a BD. The interior is silver.
I used Fomei Digital Pro X lights with this dish. I will not go into detail about them because I already wrote everything I could when describing the "Summer Time" shoot. In short, these are professional studio lights that provide both flash and continuous light. They come with 600 W modeling lights as standard, and can take up to 1000 W. In addition to the standard controls on the light, they can be controlled wirelessly with a remote, laptop, or tablet.
I photographed two girls during this shoot. I used a simple setup for one and a slightly strange arrangement of lights for the other. I simply decided that the model's styling was perfect for lighting experiments.
I was seriously concerned that such a small modifier would give me light that was too hard if I placed it too far away. But putting it closer would create a lot of contrast between, for example, the nose and cheeks. The model would also be unable to move because every attempt to change position would alter the composition dramatically. That is exactly why I prefer larger sizes. The problem with them is that they eat up huge amounts of power, especially with a honeycomb grid attached. They are also heavy and awful to transport because they take up a lot of room and cannot be folded. I have complained about this more than once, threatening to find something collapsible. And I found it... while doing this shoot.
2012
As I wrote at the beginning, these photos were taken last year. At the time, I was doing a series of shoots with Vanessa Zalewska, who did the makeup. There were quite a few gold accents in those styles, just like this time.
First style
Kasia Stypa posed for me, and she waited a record amount of time for the photos. For the main light, I used a Fomei Digital Pro X 500 Ws and the aforementioned 43 cm dish. I aimed a strip at her hair, while the background was lit by a Fomei Digital Pro X 300 Ws with barn doors attached, although the reflector alone would have worked just as well. A transparent umbrella placed on the floor lit her irises.
Backstage
Second style
I experimented more here...
Two lights illuminated the face, one with the dish and the other from behind the strip. In the end, the light was very soft. I also added a bare rim light for the hair. The background and irises were lit in the same way as before.
Backstage
Summary
These were more lighting experiments than a standard shoot. In the first style, the dish was far from the model, while in the second it was close. The small dish worked better than I expected, although I do not know whether a cheap Chinese model of the same diameter would be just as good. Their shapes are very different. In any case, I stuck with the 70 cm model that I used for most of my shoots. It is just a shame that it is so impractical to transport.
The Fomei equipment was supplied by the official Polish importer, Medikon.