What is a Beauty Dish ?

[SR95RACER]

Hurrell never used a beauty dish ,at least not as the ones used today .Retouching was often done with a Adams retouching machine or the retouching desk .

[Peter De Smidt]

There is a before and after retouching example in one of the books on Hurrell. It's a picture of Joan Crawford. I can hunt it down tomorrow. They also show his typical lighting setups.

[Jac@stafford.net]

There is a before and after retouching example in one of the books on Hurrell. It's a picture of Joan Crawford. I can hunt it down tomorrow. They also show his typical lighting setups.

Peter, that is great information. Thank you. With just that information I can browse our local libraries. If I find the book I will share it.

[SergeiR]

I would love to see one of Hurel's negatives before and after retouching only because I am so bad at it. I restored a large format negative retouching stand (machine), just to learn the original technique. I just suck at it.

That is not to be taken as a criticism. Hurel's work is astounding. He set the standard, IMHO.

Well.. No he didnt. First of all there was C.Bull who worked at exactly same direction. Secondly there were plenty of other folks. You just happen to know his name, thats all Marketing is great thing, isnt it.

As of "before and after" - not a whole lot of chance, b/c it was done on negatives. So once "after" was there - "before" was dead.

But to give you better idea on what people did with those retouch stands - i just did article recently, so i happen to have scans handy.. book on "amateur photography" circa 1911.


Before retouching by Sergei Rodionov, on Flickr


After retouching by Sergei Rodionov, on Flickr

[Armin Seeholzer]

I think it was Hensel were it invented, but maybe you are right:
https://www.google.ch/search?q=hense...=2318&bih=1324

Cheers Armin