Beauty lighting is a genre full of a range of nuance and subtlety, and one of the best ways to explore that is through the use of lighting modifiers. This excellent video will show the differences between a reflector, beauty dish, and scrim, along with a wide variety of sample images showing their uses.
Coming to you from Lindsay Adler Photography, this fantastic video details her three favorite lighting modifiers for beauty work: the Magnum reflector, a white beauty dish, and a scrim. A reflector produces some of the hardest light of any modifier, giving crisp lighting and hard edges, often akin to sunlight. Meanwhile, a beauty dish tends to produce softer light while still providing decently punchy contrast. Many photographers love beauty dishes and will frequently add a grid to control spill; it is probably my favorite modifier as well. Lastly, a scrim will produce the softest light of the three. Scrims simply turn a light into a large, diffuse source, creating soft transitions and a particularly flattering light. Each of these modifiers has their own purpose, and it is important to understand how they render a subject to achieve the results you desire. Check out the video above for the full rundown.Â