I’ve been tearing through pages and pages of strobist.com content to try to find someone who has done this already, but haven’t yet been able to.

The idea started when my buddy Scott showed up with a white bowl and a clear cd-spindle cover. He announced that he could make a beauty dish for under twenty dollars. Impressive. He did quite the amazing job, pulling it off with a high degree of professionality. It’s pretty wicked. Check it out.

I wanted something that offered a bit harsher light, similar to the effects of a ring flash, so as any poor college student would do, I went to Wal-Mart. Just so happens that there is a summer sale going on. I bought a 2-for-1 chip dip tray set, foil tape, super glue and a circular mirror.

We glue the mirror atop a small cd-spindle cover after cutting out the center of the dip reservoir and we’re half way there. We finish by taping the entire ‘chip arena’ with foil tape and gluing the cd-spindle onto the center of the dish. Boom baby. We’ve got a ring dish. It’s not pretty, but it works. Ring Dish 2.0 will be much nicer looking.

It works exactly like a ring flash, just without the terrible ‘lens mount only’ option and with more of a nice, direct ring of light feel. It’s pretty fun. OH! And it runs of my SB-600 on commander mode. *does a little jig*

Thanks to Scott for inspiring and the such.

Here’s something that just jumped off the camera.