Beauty Dish: White or Silver?

[pophoto]

Thinking about a Mola, but want to know reasons for and against each color choice.

Thanks in advance.
Po

 

[aboudd]

White is softer, great for women, minimizes the texture of the skin. Silver will give you more light output and it is more contrasty and less forgiven.

 

[aztwang]

Thinking about a Mola, but want to know reasons for and against each color choice.

Thanks in advance.
Po

Ill be doing a comparison tonight or tomorrow. I'll post the results. Ill be using Profoto beauty dishes. White with standard center metal disc, white with optional glass center disc and then silver dish. I have been wanting to compare for some time.

Don

 

[fotografz]

Thinking about a Mola, but want to know reasons for and against each color choice.

Thanks in advance.
Po

White is definitely softer, but not by as much as one would initially expect. Silver is more specular in character, but is easily tamed by use of various diffusers ... either an opal diffusion glass in tandem with a silk sock, White Grid or Mola mesh for different degrees of softness.

I have the highly polished (almost mirror like) silver 33.5" Mola Beamm, which is even more specular than the regular silver ... the light output and versatility if this dish is quite amazing. I shoot figure competitors with no diffusion, and add a diffusion modifier for softer portraits.

Frankly, the differences between the smaller white BDs like 20.5" Profoto Soft White and 22" Mola white Demi will be there, but subtile ... but IMO as you move up in size to the 28" or 33.5" Molas, it gets more noticeable. Profoto doesn't make a silver dish, so Mola silver would be my choice for more versatile use.

- Marc

PS, here is the difference between a black or white grid:

HoneyGrids

 

[aztwang]

White is definitely softer, but not by as much as one would initially expect. Silver is more specular in character, but is easily tamed by use of various diffusers ... either an opal diffusion glass in tandem with a silk sock, White Grid or Mola mesh for different degrees of softness.

I have the highly polished (almost mirror like) silver 33.5" Mola Beamm, which is even more specular than the regular silver ... the light output and versatility if this dish is quite amazing. I shoot figure competitors with no diffusion, and add a diffusion modifier for softer portraits.

Frankly, the differences between the smaller white BDs like 20.5" Profoto Soft White and 22" Mola white Demi will be there, but subtile ... but IMO as you move up in size to the 28" or 33.5" Molas, it gets more noticeable. Profoto doesn't make a silver dish, so Mola silver would be my choice for more versatile use.

- Marc

PS, here is the difference between a black or white grid:

HoneyGrids

Marc,
Profoto does make both silver and white, I own them both. I'll be putting up some comparisons this weekend.

 

[Kirk Candlish]

Thinking about a Mola, but want to know reasons for and against each color choice.

Po

It's not hard to find information on the internet. It is harder than just asking a question here. But with a little effort you'd be surprised what you can find.

 

[fotografz]

Marc,
Profoto does make both silver and white, I own them both. I'll be putting up some comparisons this weekend.

Thank you for the correction ... I never even seen a silver Profoto BD, but it is right on their website ... Duh!

- Marc

 

[aztwang]

Ok for this test, camera settings were: D3s manual, shutter speed 160th, iso 200 and metered at F10. Thru-out this test power settings were never changed and a meter reading was taken after every shot to show the amount of light change resulting from light modifier changes. These images are not a good representation of a properly lit image but rather just a comparison between modifiers.
Beauty dish was mounted above camera center down at subject at approx. a 30 degree angle. No fill light or reflector was used as a fill so that any changes seen are from the beauty dish. I would normally add a 3x4 soft box on the same axis from below for a nice creamy look with no shadows.
Lighting was a Profoto Pro B4 with Pro B head plus and Profoto white and silver beauty dishes were used with Honeygrid grids, white and black.
Beauty dish:
White Beauty dish with standard center metal disc F10, image 102
White Beauty dish with glass center disc meter reading F9, image 103
White Beauty dish with Black grid, meter reading F6.3, image 105
White Beauty dish with white grid, meter reading F11, image 107

Silver Beauty dish no grid, ,meter reading F12.7, image 109
Silver Beauty dish with black grid, meter reading F8, image 111
Silver Beauty dish with white grid, meter reading F10, image 113

The last 2 images were properly exposed @ F11 so you to see the difference between the 2 dishes. No grids were used.
image 118: White Beauty dish
image 119: Silver Beauty dish

A big surprise to me was the increase in light when using the white grid. I am curious if the Profoto BD grids are similar to the Honeygrids.

Hope this helps