Originally Posted by
Ari
For those considering flash for wet plate portraits, I have a suggestion for a light modifier.
I just tested my new beauty dish/octabox, and found that the loss of light with the box was only 7/10 stop.
With an Alien Bees 1600 (640 w/s) at half power from 5 feet, bare bulb, I got f16.5
With the octabox/beauty dish and front screen diffuser on, the reading was f11.8. Usually soft boxes will reduce output by 1.5-2 stops, so I think this is pretty good.
With a more powerful strobe, you could use this type of modifier without losing too much light, and still be able to provide some decent modelling on your subject.
Attached is a photo of what I'm using; you can look up "beauty dish octabox" on eBay.