28" Quasi BeautyDish SoftBox - Twin Speedlites

Just messin' with a quasi beauty-dish, but sometimes it's nice to have circular highlights associated with the look/penumbra generated by a central 'cold spot'.

 

This started out as an Ebay Easyfold style Softbox - this one was 32" X 32" (in fact 30" X 30"!). I swapped out the adaptor for something stronger - used my 'super-ring' (see earlier) to allow two Speedlites to be used, for super even coverage and more power - and made a demountable front panel complete with central reflector - as shown. I used 3mm black corrugated plasic sheeting (Correx) & mylar inside for the 28in quasi beautydish conversion.

 

Whole thing works pretty well and you don't get the 'hot ring of death' on the background - which is very common with Speedlites in BDs! I like the light it produces and this setup reverts back to a square softbox in seconds. A Grid next .. (Edit: Yep got a grid - it's a tape/webbing type from Meking. It was slow to arrive and has a modest impact on side spill .. )

 

If you're tempted, keep your mod lightweight - these pop-up softboxes are front heavy to start with! I'm still using this - if starting again now, I'd keep the circular mask but use magnets to secure the central disc. Cheers

 

Twinned Speedlites - even Profoto are getting in on the act! Two Speedlites ganged together is my preferred option for keeping iso lowish. With Odins & Canon's old 550Exs, you only need one Odin Rx.

 

(I tried a 12in Strobies conversion BD (uses an Ezybox lollipop based bracket) - didn't like the edge spill etc. Definitely prefer my 28in 'Quasi' though some purists may sigh!)

 

Edit: 2-8-13: This post refers to the original hardware version 'Odin for Canon'. I updated to firmware v1.2 c August 2012. It seems that Phottix migrated to 'Odin 1.5 for Canon' some time ago.

Done