ePhoto 16" Off Camera Flash Beauty Dish Photographic Flash Bracket Flash Mount Beauty Dish Photography Studio Light Lighting Beauty Dish Reflector Dish with Honeycomb Grid for Nikon Canon Flash

This is the review before the review. My initial thoughts upon opening the box.I bought this beauty dish to be flexible and use for my Canon 430EX II flash and also for my Alien Bee flash. I believe I will be able to use it for both without any extra pieces. I was torn between buying this dish and the larger 22" dish for the Alien Bees and then buying a cheap (Neewer) softbox to get the parts to mount my Canon flash. I felt with this dish I could use my AB light and also my Canon with no further purchases. The beauty dish was packed extremely well and was protected and I am notoriously tough on companies that improperly pack their items in my reviews. I was very satisfied with the packaging and there are no dings or dents in my dish. People have complained about the ball joint being weak on these beauty dishes but they must have listened and it now doesn't not have a ball joint but instead uses a joint that only flexes one way. This to me was no problem no matter what because I have a ball joint that I bought on Amazon that is super sturdy and built like a tank! I planned on using that one anyways but it's nice to know that this company listened and apparently changed the design. Another thing I was really happy about is that this dish has a silvery WHITE finish. I thought I would have to eventually break down and buy a AB beauty dish or maybe a fotodiox dish just to get a white one but this one is kind of a nice silvery white. It looks great! I can't wait to try it out! The honeycomb is in great shape and looks well made. I think it's a type of plastic but I almost thought it was metal at first because it's so well made and heavy duty! Ok I will update as I play with this more!FIRST UPDATE:The dish fits perfectly on my Alien Bee 800! It's so easy to go from an AB to a Canon flash with this beauty dish. So it's true you can use this with both a Canon flash and an Alien Bee with no added hardware! It seems to work great and it's made really well. I snapped a few pics of the BD with my iphone and I will upload them soon.

I bought this to use with both an Einstein and a speedlight. It works great with the Einstein -- just mount it right on with no modifications necessary. The grid is nice too -- sturdy, easy to put on and take off, and produces a great effect. Same with the white sleeve.The flash mount, however, is unusably bad. The part that the flash itself is supposed to mount to is a spring-loaded angled gripper which is simply shaped incorrectly to hold a hotshoe flash. It won't tighten beyond a certain point, and the angle of the metal doesn't hold the flash securely. At first I thought this was user error, but reading some other reviews and studying the pictures online has confirmed my observation.In summary: decent beauty dish for the Einstein / Alien Bees mount, but don't plan to use it for your flash.

When I saw this, I was excited. Here was a nice looking beauty dish complete with a full sized honeycomb filter for my 580EXII. It had the hardware, it was something I could use in front of clients rather than a DIY dish.I got it yesterday and tried to set up my flash. First thing I noticed after seeing the mounting hardware was that there was no parts list. (There were two sets of metal washers, 2 sets of plastic washers and one knob. I couldn't see anything that required two knobs so i wondered if it was a spare set. I still don't know. Of course there are no directions either. Not even a diagram.I put it together by using the product pics on the page. After playing with it for a while, I managed to get the assembly onto a stand, with my 580 on the cold shoe. There is an order u must follow to be able to mount the flash to a receiver, mount he receiver to the shoe, attach the assembly to the dish, adjust the flash position and tighten the ball joints.The cold shoe, is extremely flimsy and tends to tighten to a degree before loosening again. (Almost like it is stripped.)The dish is large and heavy and puts a strain on the ball joints so they must be very tight or the dish will simply flop down or to the side. The flash can be adjusted to be outside of the dish to inside of the dish but you will need to block the open area with some sort of dark cloth to prevent light from being lost out of the back of the dish.Maybe it's from the DIY plans I saw but I expected the inside dish to be more of a mirror but the metal reflects the light fine. What confused me was that the reflector dish was positioned with the concave side facing back to the flash. I expected the opposite so the light would reflect in a wider pattern and fill the outer dish before being reduced by the honeycomb.I took away one star because of its total lack of even the slightest information (like a parts list) so I'd know what those extra part s were for. I took another one away because of the undersized knobs for tightening the head to keep the dish steady.I don't expect to get a lot of life from this equipment. And while it didn't cost $250+ like other dishes it's not THAT cheap at $90.At least I have a functional beauty dish that I can use with my off camera flashes.