Hi sasko1. The idea of bouncing your flash in daylight sounds good, but the reason Neil advises against it is due the lack of range of your flash unit. In bright daylight you are likely to be using f11 (@ max. flash sync speed) - sunny 16 rule - and when you add the inefficiency of bouncing your flash, you may have a camera-to-subject range of no more than a couple of metres. The brighter the ambient light, the lower the range of your flash.

The idea of setting your white balance manually, whether using a preset (e.g. tungsten) or a specific Kelvin value is to ensure consistency. Even if this setting isn't correct, all the shots you take under the same lighting conditions can be adjusted as one instead of correcting each shot individually.

Edit: Oops, forgot to mention about shooting in RAW! :$

Thanks Allen for your reply. About bouncing I was thinkig of situation, when we hide under the tree shadow and than use bounce as fill. But I guess it is the same situation.

Sasko ... it's not that it isn't a good idea per se, like there is something wrong in doing so.

It is that the flashgun is under-powered for bouncing in bright light.

Re using a gel, use a WB of around 3850K .... but you have to shoot in RAW, because you will be fine-tuning your WB in post.

Thank Neil. Will have EZYsoftbox by myself tomorrow, so will use it instead of bouncing.

Can I ask you something? Can I put 1/2 CTS gel into the gel holder of SB900 instead of that orange one? Contacts won't be in use so there will be icon n the flash display, something like warning. But otherwise, will my SB 900 work normally with "wrong" gel ineserted?

Yup ... your SB-900 will work just fine.
You will just have to manually set your WB.

So that small warning symbol on the sb900 display won't cause any problems? :)

Huge thanks Neil and Allen for your help.

Which warning symbol ?

That small triangle with exclamation point in it.

But nevermind, I tried it and SB900 worked as charm. I just ignored that sign. :) Thanks for your help.

Sasko1, you should read your SB-900 manual to find out what that warning is. If it keeps coming up, you should check on that.

Niel, i think what Sasko1 means is that the sb900 recognizes that if u put in Nikon gels, the flash will change the cameras white balance automatically, b/c of a electronic chip built into the gel, but it only recognizes the full cut of cto, if u put in a half cut the flash doesnt know what temperature it is b/c it doesnt have electronic contacts, so u just set WB manually and shoot raw

Hi
so the average range of WB setting is 3850K if using a CTS gel regardless if its 1/4, 1/2 or full? And shoot in RAW to fine tune in post processing. I think I've seen a post somewhere in Tangents or this forum some sort of guideline or scenario when to best use 1/4, 1/2 or full CTS. I am using sb600 and sb800 speedlights.

Truemoments,

No, not as simple as that, since those gels work best at different temperatures obviously, and it's better to preset your WB in camera at the start to a pre-determined K setting to suit the type of gel you are using.

CTS/CTO gels: CTS means Color Temperature Straw, and it is less orange than CTO , Color Temperature Orange, and I personally prefer CTS type.

I don't have 1/4 but I would presume around the 4700K [?] mark since a full gel is around 2800-2900K and a 1/2 gel around 3850K.

Full gel will almost neutralise the tungsten lighting in a scene, whereas the 1/2 leaves a nice warm feel to background ambient, so a 1/4 would leave it warmer again, depends on taste. I only use 1/2 myself, like to retain warm background when in reception.

This is all based on flash being mainly dominant with a little ambient background, because if you are using flash just to ride on top of ambient to lift it a bit, you would need to take test shots to tweak it to suit.

Once you select a WB and it looks good, stick to that so you can batch change WB settings during workflow, unless of course your ambient, background circumstances change considerably, but I generally set to 3850+- K for 1/2 straw as it's easier in post production to tweak. If you chop and change consistently during the shoot, you leave yourself a lot of individual fine tuning in post.

Trev.

Trev,
As an aside, I have read CTO as Color Temperature Orange, not Continuous Temperature Orange, on various internet sites, including Strobist.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101-using-gels-to-correct.html

So, where are you obtaining the word, "Continuous"?

Stephen, lol, mate, I was thinking Color, and for some stupid reason typed Continuous, had a brain lapse. Shall change... damn, and I re-read it also but once written, your brain seems to auto-correct things.

Mcuh lkei tish snetncee.

Trev.

Thanks guys, you rock!