Beauty dish enough for BEauty or want softbox too?

[kevs]

I have Profoto metal white beauty dish with grid. I've tested their softboxes rfi's (not extensively, but a bit) and 3rd party brand  a bit. I don't see huge difference, but maybe I'm wrong any opinions on this for beauty, one  model, tight beauty. thanks!

[MichaelKoerner]

In my experience, beauty dishes produce "harder" light with shorter gradients between lights and shadows. The larger the softbox, the more visible the difference to a dish.

I like beauty dishes for Hollywood style lighting and perfect round eye reflections.

If you had both, you could use the other for fill/backlight:
Soft mainlight, hard (dish) backlight.
Hard (dish) mainlight, soft fill/backlight.

[Balafre]

Hi, if you possibly can, try it out first to see if it suits you. The dishes are great, BUT.... there's much less transition between light and shadow and some - if not most, skin types aren't shown to their best, and can necessitate make-up or a lot or post-prod. Younger models endure this type of lighting better than older ones, but the nature of the light is a lot more interesting than a mere soft-box. The dish with bounced fill can produce lovely results. And then the Para awaits .....

Enjoy your journey!