Phottox Luna Folding Beauty Dish at a glance:
- Website: www.phottix.com
- Price: £80
Phottix has come on in leaps and bounds since its early days, producing some amazing flash equipment and light modifiers at very affordable prices. One such product is the Phottix Luna Folding Beauty Dish. This light modifier is designed for use on the go by location photographers as it’s very small and portable, folding down into its own bag. It works a bit like an umbrella, whereby all the rods are already in place. To erect the modifier, users simply push down the plastic tensioning joists between each rod until they lock in place. It’s super-simple to set up, giving users the big advantage of less time messing about with modifiers and more time shooting. This system allows the Luna Beauty Dish to hold its shape well; it’s incredibly rigid and well built.
Inside the modifier is a dish for bouncing the light out; this is attached by three rods. During extended use, I had to tighten them up with a screwdriver on a few occasions – it’s a small criticism, but quite annoying nonetheless.
In use
The quality of the light is very good, although the box isn’t round and deep like a traditional beauty dish so it isn’t quite the same. While it doesn’t really achieve what a beauty dish does, it still gives a great-quality light, with decent softness and beautiful contrasty depth between the light and shadows. My favourite feature is the diffusion panel, which you can put over the front, turning it into something that resembles a small, useful Octabank.
It’s worth noting that there’s no grid included, nor an optional grid available. There’s only one mount available from the Phottix Luna Folding Beauty Dish – the Bowens mount – although Speedlight/Speedlite adapters and other mount adapters are inexpensive enough. For the 70cm version, it’s inexpensive at £80, which is a lot of kit for the money.
