The commercial photographer decided to make one himself for his Nikon SB-800 (although this can be used with pretty much any large flash unit) after looking at some available online, which just weren’t worth the cost, in his opinion. So after finding a little bit of inspiration from Flickr member Tyler Burk, adding his own special ingredient in the form of a convex mirror to help bounce light, and just a little bit of effort, David has himself a REALLY nice looking beauty dish for a tiny fraction of what even the cheapest units go for online.

Made out of a garden pot, an empty CD spindle, a drain gutter downspout, some velcro, and spraypaint, this beauty dish creates some silky lighting for your portraiture, with a reported loss of light of only about a stop and a half, not too shabby for a DIY hack at all. The top image here is the bare SB-800 flash, the bottom is with the beauty dish.

DIY Beauty Dish [The F Stops Here, via Lifehacker]

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The website Fring (short for Fiber Optic Ring) has a VERY creative method for channeling the light from your onboard flash into a circle of light around the edge of your lens/hood. With a little bit of MacGuyver-style ingenuity, you can build yourself a pretty sweet-looking piece of DIY hardware that will for sure have your friends in awe of your cleverness.

Hop on over to Fring to see how you can make one yourself, and come up with some great-looking images like these. I feel somewhat bad about suggesting a tutorial that I haven’t tried myself, however I know that at this point I don’t need one of these lights, so it’s not worth my effort at this point. When I do, however, this will be the way I go, and I may update this article later on.

Fring – DIY Optic Ring Light [via Lifehacker, via Hacked Gadgets]