gels, filters, white balance cocktail

babygodzilla

I like Joe McNally's books. I've read Hot Shoe Diaries and The Moment It Clicks. They're both very entertaining, even if they may not be as educational as other books. I like them anyway.

That said, a lot of times Joe throws a cocktail of two of gels, filters, and white balance. He would encounter some place with green lighting and then he says he gels his strobes with double CTO, use magenta filter, and Tungsten filter. @_@

I don't know, something like that. It's pretty confusing to me. So:

1) Is there an easy cheat sheet to all the common usage for certain gels, filters, and white balance? When to use CTO? When to use green? When to use blue? When to use this or that filter? What combination of this gel and that filter achieves? etc etc

2) Now that we're in the digital age with sophisticated software like PS, LR, and Aperture, do we really need to play with white balance on the camera still? I've never set my WB to anything but Auto. If need be I fix the WB later in LR. Joe seems to have taken a liking to Daylight setting though. Is it really necessary?

Thanks a lot guys

pathfinder

babygodzilla wrote:

I like Joe McNally's books. I've read Hot Shoe Diaries and The Moment It Clicks. They're both very entertaining, even if they may not be as educational as other books. I like them anyway.

I like Joe's books too. He explains in them when to use CTO, green, blue gels as well....

That said, a lot of times Joe throws a cocktail of two of gels, filters, and white balance. He would encounter some place with green lighting and then he says he gels his strobes with double CTO, use magenta filter, and Tungsten filter. @_@

Did you really follow what he was saying in his books? CTO, or 1/2 CTO gels are used to match your speedlite's color temperature to ambient tungsten lighting. Like using fill flash ( balanced for tungsten light ) indoors, in a room lit by tungsten light. Or sometimes out of doors, near sunset, with the camera set to tungsten color balance. This will give the nice warm tungsten skin tones with the ice blue sky you will get with your camera set up for tungsten lighting.

So:

1) Is there an easy cheat sheet to all the common usage for certain gels, filters, and white balance? When to use CTO? When to use green? When to use blue? When to use this or that filter? What combination of this gel and that filter achieves? etc etc

2) Now that we're in the digital age with sophisticated software like PS, LR, and Aperture, do we really need to play with white balance on the camera still? I've never set my WB to anything but Auto. If need be I fix the WB later in LR. Joe seems to have taken a liking to Daylight setting though. Is it really necessary?

Thanks a lot guys

CTO or 1/2 CT or even 1/4 CTO to match tungsten lighting.

Green gels over your flash to match Fluorescent lighting, but most folks would tell you that the best filter for tungsten light is the off switch on the wall for the fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lighting is becoming more and more common as compact fluorescent lights replace tungsten lights to save energy in our homes and businesses too. Classic film technique for fluorescent light was green gel over the flash, and a magenta filter over the camera lens. It is easier to just turn off the fluorescent lights. There are wide spectrum fluorescents that don't need all this effort, just a grey card shot, but not most of them in homes or storefronts.

The blue filters are sometimes used over the flash for shooting in shade out of doors during the day time.


As for whether we need to mess with gels, since we can set the color temp in Photoshop, well, you'll get different answers to a certain extent. But the simple one, is that if you mix different light sources - flash, tungsten, fluorescent, sunlight, etc - your image will not really sing if you only correct one of the light sources color temp in Photoshop. You will need one color temp for the key light, one color temp for shadows, maybe a third color temp for mid tones. Can this be done in PS? Sure it can be but it is not easy at all.. Can YOU do this in Photoshop - I don't know, but I know it is a whole lot easier for me to correct it while shooting it, than later at home in PS.

Does this mean I omit a grey card during a shoot for color balance. Nope, I do that too.

Ultimately, color balancing is done by the photographer to create the image warmth/coolness that they desire, and they may not even be the "accurate" color temp. But starting with all the lights matched is a great help. Trust me on this.

Listen to Joe, he is the real deal, and if he uses gels, why would I think I am smarter, more able than he is?


Reread Joe's books - the answers really are already in there.

If you find a scenario in Joe's bool that you do not understand, post a thread about that specific issue and see if you can't get an answer here.

Asking several questions in one thread will usually not get as many answers as a thread needing a specific, single answer though.

Joe likes daylight, rather that AWB, because it is consistent, even if wrong. AWB can be all over the map. If you shoot RAW, the color temp is not set until your render your RAW files.

babygodzilla

i guess i just had trouble following what he's explaining with his colors in the middle of all the lastolites, trigrips, strobe positions, 80-20s, and whatever else he's got in his magic pouch


thank you. i will re-read a few passages next time.

pathfinder

Much of Joe's use of Lastolites and diffusers is to create a large light source, from a small speedlite flash tube. One of the classic ways is to shoot through a TriGrip diffuser.

Just keep in mind what I said about gels, CTO orange to match tungsten, blue to match shade, and green to match fluorescent. Red, purple, yellow are just for theatrical effects.