Talk to me about Gels

lilmomma · January 11, 2010

I know Jeffreaux uses gels a lot...hopefully he will chime in

I am interested in trying my hand with them, particularly because I want to be more precise balancing flash with ambient, and I will be practicing a lot this year with using flash for fill outdoors.
My question is: How do you know when to use what? I sorta get the basics of the colors and temps, i don't know, maybe need a refresher..but when do you decide if it's 1/4, 1/2, etc... is there a technique or is it a trial and error? any advice on gels particular is appreciated.

Thanks!

Art Scott · January 11, 2010

Basically Joe McNally in his Hot Shoe Diaries says to experiment with the gels to see what you like (and take in depth notes on your experimentation)......the cooler the lights the more CTO you will need........

Qarik · January 11, 2010

lilmomma wrote:

I know Jeffreaux uses gels a lot...hopefully he will chime in

I am interested in trying my hand with them, particularly because I want to be more precise balancing flash with ambient, and I will be practicing a lot this year with using flash for fill outdoors.
My question is: How do you know when to use what? I sorta get the basics of the colors and temps, i don't know, maybe need a refresher..but when do you decide if it's 1/4, 1/2, etc... is there a technique or is it a trial and error? any advice on gels particular is appreciated.

Thanks!

gels appear to have 2 uses:

1) matching light source colors
2) creative effects

For creative effects it is simply experiment experiment! For matching the color of other light sources..well this is a lot of experimenting as well. If other light sources are dim and it is dark over all then you can simply over power the other light sources with your flash. To me gels only make sense when you are using your flash as more of a fill. (note that your flash is similar in color to non-golden hour sun light so gels are not needed in those cases wherne you are filling in natural light). To complicate things..I find that a lot of light sources these days don't easily fall into pure tungsten or fluorescent...they are more daylight (halogens and CFLs).. but not quite. I rarely see full CTO tungsten in the setting I have been in. In the end it comes down to chimping the shot..try full CTO and then WB to CTO..does it look good? If tno then 1/2 CTO and retry.

That probably wasn't helpfull..honestly I don't gel much at all. I am lazy and convert really mixed color source shots to BW. hehe

heatherfeather · January 11, 2010

When I had this conversation with Jeff, he pointed me to this:

Happy reading!

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/04/lighting-102-61-gelling-for-fluorescent.html

divamum · January 11, 2010

Here's a thread from the summer - the main thread is interesting, but also make sure you read the threads linked out of the various posts - it was quite a multi-user conversation!

Enjoy

bloomphotog · January 11, 2010

I use my gels for creative effects, primarily. Here's a recent example from a model test.

In this shot, I wanted some cool rim-lighting on the characters. I simply placed two strips of purple/pink gel over the head of a SB-600, secured them with the Hohnl Speed Strap.

Art Scott · January 11, 2010

I have gelled for many years.....studio has only had one background but I have many colored Rosco and Lee gels....but I have not gotten into the CTO gelling as McNally talks about in HSD.......mentioned in my other post above........I will gel for ever for backgrounds at least......:D

lilmomma · January 12, 2010

Art Scott wrote:

Basically Joe McNally in his Hot Shoe Diaries says to experiment with the gels to see what you like (and take in depth notes on your experimentation)......the cooler the lights the more CTO you will need........

Does that mean I should put down New Moon and pick this one up?

Thanks for all the tips and information.

Heather, that was a great link, especially to understand the basics anyway.

Diva, haven't had a chance to dig through that link but it is on my to do list today.

Qarik, that was helpful for sure, I figured once the basics were down it was more of an experimentation, just wasn't 100% sure on that.

bloomphotog, awesome photo, didn't know they made pink and purple ones! now i'm getting excited!

Art- so do you just have a white background for that?

divamum · January 12, 2010

Melissa - find a theatrical supplier in your area (a place that provides lights etc - if you have rock concerts in town, they'll likely be the place that provides local equipment, rentals etc). They will most likely have the Rosco "swatchbooks" and they're available FREE. They're exactly the right size to put over a speedlight, and you'll get every colour of the rainbow....

I laminated mine, but it's not really necessary - just made it easier for me to keep them in my bag without tearing them. Here's another thread - make it to the end, where there are various pictures of setups from me and others.

Art Scott · January 12, 2010

lilmomma wrote:

1- Does that mean I should put down New Moon and pick this one up?
[SHREDDED]
2- Art- so do you just have a white background for that?

1- YUP absolutely:D:D

rofl

2- started out with a savage thunder grey paper.....too light
then went to a self painted black (exterior house paint $10) on a 10 x 30 muslin.........
then all of my clients wanted to shoot outdoors....much more to m liking....not really a studio person......so to make it fun and interesting to me I gel and mix colors on the palette (backdrop)..........

a few links to help make searching a bit easier:

ROSCO'S HOMEPAGE...........

LEE FILTERS HOME PAGE............

A lot of people short change themselves by thinking that if a gel is labled as a "cine" gel I cannot use it in my still photo work.........a gel is a gel and will work in any medium......until it melts away from the heat of the lamps shooting thru it......which will not be a problem for most still photographers....unless you get your flash to firing extremly fast for some reason with the gel attached directly to the flash head......

I have swatch books but never really considered using them for a couple of reasons........
1- the local theatrical suppliers started charging for them.
2- I have several different sized flash heads on my hotshoe and handle mount flashes.....all studio flashes have a 12x12" gel holder then I can take the left over strips and make what I need for each off camera flash

jeffreaux2 · January 14, 2010

Melissa,

I began using gels primarily because I was un satisfied with the color balance when using flash for fill in shade outdoors or when using flash indoors....mixed with tungsten ambient light. I don't use gels for special effects(except one little trick) and will leave that to others.

My opinion is that unless you are in daylight...that is outdoors on a sunny day and NOT in the shade....then you should at least consider using a gel on the flash to correctly match the color temp of the ambient light.

Typically I use CTO (orange) gels on the flash for mixing with tungsten incandescent lighting indoors and CTB (blue) gels for matching to shade outdoors. There are also times I use a CTS (straw) gel indoors....but usually its CTO.

One thing you shouldn't do is use the auto white balance setting (AWB) when using a gel. With AWB....the camera will automatically try to balance the color temps of the various sources and the camera cannot possibly "know" that you are adding a foriegn color to the flash. Dont do it.

Thats not to say there is no place for AWB.......in fact...in an indoor location with lots of sunlight via windows is added to a tungsten mix....going gel-less and using AWB might be your best bet. Experiment with that.

Typically though......I arrive at a venue.....and lets say it has dim incandescent lighting. I keep a piece of white card stock in my bag and use it for a custom white balance target. Place the target white sheet under one of the incandescent light fixtures and shoot it so that it fills the frame. Use AWB for this. Then look at the histogram. You are about to tell the camera that THAT shot represents white...so....be sure it is exposed as a highlight (to the far right of the histogram with all the data) but not over exposed either. The resulting image will likely have a rosy orange appearance. NOW set the white balance on the camera to CWB....and follow the manufacturers directions for xhoosing your correctly exposed target shot as the CWB sample. Then take a shot of the room. Your whites should now appear white in the resulting image......and maybe even a tad TOO cool. Thats okay if you shoot RAW.....it can be adjusted to taste in Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW.

NOW.......to choose the correct CTO gel to put on the flash.

Bring the white balance target image back up on your camera's LCD. Lay your selection of CTO gels out on top of the white cardstock...and look for the closest match as compared to the LCD. Try THAT one if you want, but experience has shown me that I will prefer the next shade deeper.

Attatch the gel and shoot away.

Just remember that you have a gelled flash and things will go awry quickly if you move to a different room with a different temperature of ambient light.

But....it's that simple.

Outdoors is even easier.

There I use the lightest of the two blue gels in the Phoxle Flashmatch set when I am working in shade....which is nearly always the case with me. I use the "cloudy" white balance in this scenario and make final adjustments in the RAW editor. Using cloudy white balance will get you very very close to the correct white balance.

The only time I deviate from this is if I want to overblue the flash. In this case I use a deeper blue gel. A 1/2 or even 3/4 CTB LEE will do the trick. The resulting image in this case even with a "cloudy" WB will cause your flash lit foreground (your subject) to appear blue on the LCD. BUT when you correct for the subject's WB in a RAW editor the background will go super warm. A nice effect in some instances.

I highly recommend the Phoxle gels. The owner (ChrisP) is a Dgrin member and is super knowledgeable in all that you can imagine that has to do with color temperatures. AND he is a nice guy!

Phoxle doesnt offer the CTS gels though......and I prefer LEE when I want to go darker than the lightest of the Phoxle blues. Still though, there's no simpler way to get "into" gels than to buy a set of Phoxles. Especially for a beginner. Im going to send him a link to this thread to see if he will chime in.

Hope that helps....questions?

lilmomma · January 15, 2010

Awesome info Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time. Now to take it all in. I will definitely check out the Phoxle gels. One little question, what would be a reason to use the CTS over the CTO? I've never heard of the CTS before. And, just to clarify, is it just strictly shooting in the midday sun you would not need a gel..which I figured because it seems the color temperatures match...but in a late day orange sun you would, and also a cloudy day? So with a late day sun, you would use CTO and cloudy day would be the CTB right?

lilmomma · January 15, 2010

oh and just went to the phoxle site...just peel and stick, huh? so they won't melt? I've heard that some gels will melt if they get too close to the flash. I am really digging the simplicity there. and do they ever start to lose the stickiness, or are they like that cling material?

Gambrel · January 15, 2010

lilmomma wrote:

I know Jeffreaux uses gels a lot...hopefully he will chime in

I am interested in trying my hand with them, particularly because I want to be more precise balancing flash with ambient, and I will be practicing a lot this year with using flash for fill outdoors.
My question is: How do you know when to use what? I sorta get the basics of the colors and temps, i don't know, maybe need a refresher..but when do you decide if it's 1/4, 1/2, etc... is there a technique or is it a trial and error? any advice on gels particular is appreciated.

Thanks!

Thank you for asking this question. I just learned a TON in this thread!

jeffreaux2 · January 15, 2010

lilmomma wrote:

Awesome info Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time. Now to take it all in. I will definitely check out the Phoxle gels. One little question, what would be a reason to use the CTS over the CTO? I've never heard of the CTS before. And, just to clarify, is it just strictly shooting in the midday sun you would not need a gel..which I figured because it seems the color temperatures match...but in a late day orange sun you would, and also a cloudy day? So with a late day sun, you would use CTO and cloudy day would be the CTB right?

The CTS exhibits a tad less red in skin tones. I have only JUST begun using one....now and then. It's a 3/4 CTS by either LEE or Roscoe.....I dont remember which...

A typical Canon speedlight is daylight balanced....5500K. It will match daylight near perfect.

For late day sun Ive seen folks use a 1/4 CTO.....I have very little experience there.

For slightly overcast skies.......no bald sun, yet you can distinctly see where the sun is behind the clouds and it throws soft shadows you can still get away with no gel. Under heavy overcast....dreary skies....experiment. Ive used bare or light blue gel in that case.

jeffreaux2 · January 15, 2010

lilmomma wrote:

oh and just went to the phoxle site...just peel and stick, huh? so they won't melt? I've heard that some gels will melt if they get too close to the flash. I am really digging the simplicity there. and do they ever start to lose the stickiness, or are they like that cling material?

The phoxles have an adhesive backing a lot like "sticky-notes". They stick, but remove very easily. They dont melt, but can get a tad disfigured with high power flash use....but so can a regular gel that doesnt have the adhesive.....and with those, you have to use tape or velcro in some fasion to mount them. I did discolor a dark orange Phoxle once.....but I had shot two extremely dark venues with it...and the second I shot about 900 frames with flash. I sent it to Phoxle so they could examine it....but...it didnt damage the flash in any way.

I am just about ready for a new set because my lightest blue....the one I use most....is starting to lose it's adhesive quality. I cant say how many shots....no idea.....but surely in the range of 6000 to 8000 shots. Ive had them for two full seasons of senior portraits. Oh...and I have a bad habit of sticking the gels to the back of the flash when I dont want it.....like when I move from shade to sun...or get near windows at an indoor venue. THAT makes it easier for the adhesive to pick up dirt...dust...lint...whatever.....more so than if I behaved myself and stuck them back in the case where they belong.

There is another product out there that I have tried.

"Sticky-Filters" is a product similar to the phoxles. Self adhesive that work the same way. That kit has green in it to match flourescents as well as a few orange and maybe one blue. Ive never had a need for the flourescents and havent tried the blue. The oranges in that set exhibit much more red than the phoxles in skin tones. I dont use them. I do keep them in the bag in case of emergency....but still prefer the phoxle set.

lilmomma · January 16, 2010

Awesome Jeff!!

Printing out your posts and sticking it in my bag. You rock, thanks so much!!

Talk to me about Gels

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