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As an adjunct to the Tangents blog, the intention with this forum is to answer any questions, and allow a diverse discussion of topics related photography. With that, see it as an open invitation to just climb in and start threads and to respond to any threads.
all about gels
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Hello neil and just would liek to take the time to thank you for all the wonderful tips and examples that you show i have a question i am starting to do some comunion shots in a church and i never used gels i know that a straw 1/2 cts is what i should use when i put the gel on should i put my white balance to 3800 k or put it on tungsten?? im a little confused about it i have rosco gels and it says for the straw it says a yellow or less red version of 1/2 cto converts 5500 k daylight to 3800 k deep dyed base im not sure what that means if you can help me that would be great thank you anthony
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Based on what you read in the Rosco gel product description, for a 1/2 CTS gel, you want to set your white balance to 3800K. A CTS gel is 2900K.
However, you have to look at your camera manual to determine what the approximate white balance of tungsten is. If your tungsten WB is not close to 2900K, then you can't set your camera to that and use a CTS gel, because there will be a mismatch.
In general, you want to set the camera's WB to the WB of whatever gel you are putting on the flash so the flash closely matches the ambient lighting. -
to attain "correct"color from ur flash u must set ur WB to the kelvin temperature of the light that is now being emitted from ur flash due to the gels color, (unless u r using a hard gel cap that the flash recognizes and sets WB to the setting automatically,) so if u were to put a half CTS on a speedlight the color of light illuminating your subject will become (approx) 3800K, so if u want 3800K colored light to appear neutral(which i assume u do thats why we r gelling in the first place!) u must set that number as ur WB
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David67,
By putting a gel on your flash, you have shifted the color of the light emitted by the flash. A CTS gel shifts the light from the flash to 2900K, so if your camera WB is set to flash, your images are going to look dramatically different. You would likely be way off.
There are books and articles that talk about setting the camera to one WB while gelling your flash for another WB to get different creative lighting effects, but for regular portrait and wedding photographs, that may not be what you want. You have to play around with this to see if you want the creative effect or not.
http://neilvn.com/tangents/2011/12/04/gelling-your-flash-for-effect-model-anelisa/
http://neilvn.com/tangents/2011/05/03/gelling-your-flash-for-effect-model-bethany/
http://neilvn.com/tangents/2011/05/09/mixing-the-white-balance-of-different-light-sources/
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