Questions about Monolights:

[Sean Setters]

On this board a while back there was a DIY style beauty dish that was getting some talk. It essentially did the same thing. It was made from a large plastic potting bowl with a whole in the bottom. Some really liked the light from it, which is fine, it just doesn't replicate beauty dish lighting.

I own a 14" Titanium colored Lumodi (made for speedlights), a 19" silver generic Ebay BD (with grids), 22" PCB HOBD, and a 22" Mola Demi (white, with stacked P.A.D. and opal glass) with White Lightning/Alienbees mounts. All of them can provide beautiful and interesting light in the right hands. They're all a bit different, yes...but to say one is really that much better than the others, I can't. Here's how I use them:

1) Right now, my default BD is the Mola Demi. I prefer its white finish most of the time. It seems to light subjects very well when used properly. It is very expensive, though.

2) I use the HOBD when I have to place the light source farther away from the subject and I'm trying to kill the ambient. Being silver, and shaped the way it is, it is a very efficient modifier. I will typically add a bit of a warming gel to the light in order to counter-act the cool colortone resulting from the silver reflective surface.

3) I use the 19" Ebay dish when I really want to control the light. First of all, it's a bit smaller--but it also came with two different grids. Those grids are great for limiting spill. Even though the dish is silver, I don't feel the light coming off of it is quite as cool in color tone as the HOBD's. I still usually throw in 1/8 - 1/4 CTS (or CTO).

4) I use the Lumodi if I'm strictly using speedlights. Many times this happens because of a limited working space. The titanium finish is warm in color and doesn't require any gelling. In fact, it can be a bit too warm under some circumstances requiring an offsetting CTB gel on the strobe. Overall, I like this modifier in closed, tight quarters.

I wouldn't hesitate to pull any of the modifiers out given the circumstances for which they are [in my mind] ideally used.

Truth be told, there is so much variation in beauty dish designs for studio lights (from Profoto, Mola, Dynalite, Hensel, Broncolor, Speedotron), as well as variations in finishes (white, soft silver, mirrored), as well as variations in center reflectors, that it's difficult for us to clearly define what the "classic" beauty dish output should look like. Even dishes that look very similar may be designed so that the flash tube is placed further in or out of the dish and thus providing a noticably different look.

At the end of the day, you just have to do some research, find something you think you'll like using, buy it, and try it out for yourself. There is no wrong light modifier (I've used bedsheets, walls, index cards, 4'x6' softboxes, 5 different "beauty dishes", PLMs, octaboxes, stripboxes, 7" reflectors, gels, etc...)--but each modifier has characteristics that make it useful (providing pleasing results) under specific situations.