A Flash in the Pan: Bare-Bulb DIY Beauty Dish

From the south of India comes a new take on the DIY speedlight beauty dish, courtesy Strobist reader Sinu Kumar.

Unlike studio flashes, most speedlights have a tiny, captive flash tube with a reflector already built into the housing. And if you want a true beauty dish design you'll need an omnidirectional light source. So you first have to convert the beam light from a speedlight into a more omnidirectional bare bulb.

Most people do this by diffusing the speedlight with a dome, or scrambling the light with a convex mirror. Both of which, of course, eat light.

Not so Kumar's design. He actually removed the bare flash tube from inside a speedlight and mounted it in the dish. Bonus points for the material chosen for the tube-holding assembly, too.

Before the link, a warning: DO NOT try this project unless you know what you are doing. Here, there be dragons -- or at least some very high voltages. And if you do, please insulate the flash tube leads. It scares me just to look at them exposed like that, Sinu.

Warnings given, the sub-$10.00 bare bulb beauty dish is here.

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