DIY Project: Alien Bees Beauty Dish

I was stumbling through the internet today with one goal in mind. To make a cheap beauty dish for my Alien Bees AB1600 strobe. Don’t get me wrong, Paul C Buff has got some high-quality, inexpensive gear available. Unfortunately, the economy (and more specifically my wallet) will not afford me the luxury of adding the 22″ Beauty Dish to my gear pile.

That being said, there are a few choice articles on how to make your own beauty dishes. Unfortunately all the ones I’ve come across are meant for speedlights and I want one for my AB1600. The first article I came across is an old one on the Strobist Flickr Group. The original poster, mortonphotographic, puts together an extremely cheap and effective beauty dish using a trash can lid and some random hardware picked up at a local store.

Reading through the discussions, there was one member who was thinking the same thing I was when first reading it. aparmley posts his own concoction using many of the items that I was already throwing around in my head. His is going to be the basis of my experiment.

First thing I need to change to get this working with an AB1600 is that I want my dish to clip into the frontplate just like any other standard Paul C Buff light modifier. To do this, I am taking the simplest route. I’ll just cut a 3 7/16″ hole in the rear of the 24″ plastic terra cotta saucer. This may need to be reinforced, but I will not know until I put it together and test it out.

Next change, instead of using another smaller 8″ saucer as the return, I will be ordering this 8-1/2” Round Convex Mirror instead. This should spread the light out a bit and be wide enough to catch most of the light coming from the flash tube. Again, I won’t know until I order it and test it out. It will probably take some testing in order to get the ideal float space between the mirror and the back of the saucer but I am ballparking it at about 4″ from the base so I don’t get light leakage from the flash-tube shooting right past the return and into the scene.

From there I plan on mounting the mirror return to the saucer with 3 rods. I’m going to be looking for a diameter of 1/8th inch in order to keep stability high and light blockage to a minimum. I’m still debating on whether I should epoxy them in place or just thread the ends and pass-through the rear of the saucer.

I’m looking to have this completely finished for less than $60 when all is said and done. That is roughly half of what a 22″ Beauty Dish costs through alienbees.com. That being said, the list below links to amazon items strictly for those who would like to see the materials (I have not purchased them yet so I cannot take and post any pictures). It would NOT be cost effective to order everything online as the shipping alone would double the final total. I plan on purchasing these items locally from stores such as Lowes and Home Depot.

The rundown material list as I see it right now:

- 24″ Plastic Terra Cotta Saucer (Haven’t found one yet)

- 8-1/2” Round Convex Mirror: $11.27

- 1 Can Krylon Fusion Spraypaint – Flat White: $5.63

- 1 Can Krylon Fusion Spraypaint: Black Hammered: $6.72

- Poplar Dowel, 1/8 x48″: $0.59

- Epoxy or similarly strong adhesive such as gorilla glue.

I will update this post as I get the materials and start working on the project. In the meantime, if anyone out there has any words of advice please drop a comment.