This week on Film Jams, we are orchestrating an epic battle: the Profoto Beauty Dish vs. Octa Softbox Review, to see which truly reigns supreme for portrait photography. Softboxes tend to be a staple in any photographer’s kit, but the beauty dish can also be a good tool for lighting, depending on the style of your shoot.
Choosing the right modifiers for your light can really give you unique ways to create great photos, and knowing the difference between them can bring your photography to the next level. Since the beauty dish lacks the diffuser of the softbox, it has a more direct light, but is still not as harsh as a light without any modifier. You can also buy a diffuser or sock for the beauty dish for those times you want to soften it up a bit. However, for this shoot, we used the beauty dish as it came (no additional diffusion added). Let’s do a quick Review of the Profoto Beauty Dish.
The beauty dish makes use of a center disc in front of the light that bounces it around the dish, giving you a more uniform but slightly more direct light than the standard softbox, as well as more chiseled and defined shadows that would be more noticeable in portrait photography. It can create a very unique look for your portraits.
The Profoto 3-foot Octa Softbox created a look that was, well, more soft, as the name suggests. Being a three foot softbox, the difference between the two light modifiers was not huge (as you can see in the video). Moving to a 5-foot softbox or larger, would create a more noticeable difference between the beauty dish, and softer light. Check out the video for the Profoto 3′ Octa Softbox Review and see the difference between the Profoto Beauty Dish.
We think both offered a very nice light quality, but ultimately it depends on the look you’re going for. What do you think? Which modifier do you prefer for lighting portraits? The Profoto Beauty Dish or Softbox or something different? Let us know and thanks for watching!
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The equipment we used to film:
PHOTO GEAR
-Profoto Softbox – https://amzn.to/2uM50i7
-Profoto Beauty Dish – https://amzn.to/2AgOSKL
-Less expensive alternative- https://amzn.to/2LyYZPs
-Profoto D2 500 Strobe – https://amzn.to/2Lkd2c1
-Canon 5D mkIII – https://amzn.to/2NIYiAu
-Profoto Air Remote – https://amzn.to/2LisJR8
CAMERAS
-Canon C100 – https://amzn.to/2NJQD51
LENSES
-Canon 24-105 – https://amzn.to/2ILo9tp (BTS video)
-Canon 85mm f/1.2 II L – https://amzn.to/2uaceLH
TRIPODS
-Sachtler DV4II – https://amzn.to/2KTXbfH
MIC
-Sennheiser MKE600 – https://amzn.to/2ILulBP
LIGHTS:
-Profoto D2 500w Strobes – https://amzn.to/2uLtd8d
-Lowel Omni-light – https://amzn.to/2A8E5Cb
If you have any questions about the video, or how light modifiers work, or even cinematography and filmmaking questions in general, please reach out to us in the comments. Thanks for watching our Profoto Beauty Dish vs. Octa Softbox video on FilmJams!
What would you like to see in our next video?
Filmed on location at: Litewave Media in St. Petersburg, FL – Video Production Company.
Special Thanks to the St. Petersburg Clearwater Film Commission Digital Creator Program for making this web series possible.
