I recently saw a tutorial for a home-made beauty dish for flash photography & decided to give it a go myself. This is basically just another item designed to diffuse the harsh light from flashguns when taking portraits.

The dish consists of a rounded garden plant container & a plastic CD container painted white & used to deflect light from the flashgun onto the subject.

The components were made up of a pot from a local garden centre. I had searched several DIY outlets & not found one. Unfortunately, after paying £5.99 at a local garden centre, my wofe advised me that they were quite expensive at that particular centre, so you can probably find them cheaper if you look around the garden centres. 

An item recommended on the website I saw this on originally, used a black plastic rectangular tube affair which is used to slide the flash head into the pot. It’s part of a drainpipe connector widely available in the States, but I couldn’t find anything similar at Focus, Homebase, B & Q & a couple of local shops. We must have a different gutter system because the nearest I could find were square & slightly narrower than the width of my flash head. I originally planned to use the metal brackets seen in my picture here, but found I didn’t actually need them as I cut a hole just a little wider than the flashgun & when sliding it into the opening it forms a really nice, tight fit, so won’t fall off without some work.

I cut holes in the plant container & the CD container & screwed the black plastic CD base onto the inside of the plant pot.

The CD top just slips into the base as it does when it’s full of CDs. The original design calls for a convex mirror fitted inside the CD top to reflect light back into the pot so it can be diffused from the pot out onto the subject. Apparently these are available for a few dollars in USA at car parts shops but I;ve not found any locally yet, so until I o, I’m using the reflective surface of a CD disc.

A few coats of enamel spray paint – black outside & white inside – later & the DIY Beauty Dish is complete.

Now all I have to do is to test it out, when I can find a willing volunteer to pose for some shots!