Colored Fill Flash

davidweaver

Any suggestions on using the colored gels that come with the sb800? I do a lot of indoor photography where the lighting color is no where near the flash color. I use a diffuser but really dislike the bluish tones I sometimes get. It is especially bad when I'm shooting a band or musician on stage as the lighting is from sets of cans with gels on them. I'd rather use no flash but cant find a good f1 lens.:rofl

Thanks
David

ziggy53

Hi David,

For stage lighting, if you set your camera white-balance to 3400K (or shoot RAW) and filter your flash to the same, you can probably mix the two light sources fairly well.

Otherwise, just get a fast lens, high ISO, and shoot away.

Andy provides some incentive and clues to success.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=11413

BenA2

davidweaver wrote:

Any suggestions on using the colored gels that come with the sb800? I do a lot of indoor photography where the lighting color is no where near the flash color. I use a diffuser but really dislike the bluish tones I sometimes get. It is especially bad when I'm shooting a band or musician on stage as the lighting is from sets of cans with gels on them. I'd rather use no flash but cant find a good f1 lens.

Thanks
David

Attaching Gels to your flash is a great way to help out color balance. My personal experience is with using CTO gels to balance indoor tungsten lighting. There's a good article on using gels at Strobist here. And, his most recent post, here, shows an alternative way to attach gels.

How this technique will apply to shooting concerts I'm not sure. The gelled stage lighting may not match up well with standard corrective gel colors (i.e. CTO and CTB gels). But, if you're generally getting a blue, cool cast in your subjects, you should consider giving CTO gels a shot to warm things up a bit.

GJMPhoto

Warming Flash - given only what you've got!
A little sideways on this topic, but a clever tip a photojournalist once taught me:

To quickly warm up an image without putting gels on your flash...lift the flash into a bounce position, hold you camera with one hand, and hold your other hand at a 45-degree (approx) angle to the bounced flash...in other words bounce the flash off the palm of your hand. The result is that the flash is nicely warmed by the skin/blood of your hand.

I've used it back in the old days of film to counter the effects of cool lighting when I didn't have any filtration with me or didn't have the time to attach it.

- Gary.

ian408

Gary, that's a useful tip.

Thanks!
Ian

Art Scott

Personally, I never use flash for any stage shows(musicals, concerts, operas, dance etc...) I try to use as low an iso as I can hand hold and shoot at f5.6 and some where around a 60th of a second or slower if need be.....and I shoot raw so that corections can be made if necessary...if for some reason I must use an auto or program setting then I start at iso 400 and chimp the shots to determine if I must go on up the iso scale.....I have shot dance festivals at iso 1600 from the back of a concert hall while also running sound for the show......Here on this GALLERY PAGE, the first 3 pics were shot on film using Fuji 100 at 1/60 at f5.6 the next 2 dance shots are digital.