Why I use Color Gels
April 23rd, 2009 | Published in 4 Photogs | 5 Comments
I don’t care if you shoot in RAW. Color gels allow you to control the light sources COMPARED to other sources. If you have blue and orange light in the same image, RAW processing won’t fix that. So here is a good example with an amateur model. Brian Jost, while kicking it at Hoffmann’s house doing post, asked me why I use color gels for my reception images. These four images drive the point home.
Here is the first image. I took it at a really high iso to let in the orangish ambient light. BTW all images are ETTL with a stofen omnibounce on a 580exII. It is mostly to prove a point, though I’m sure you’ve had images at some point where you’ll say “damn that background is really orange.”
Next I took an image to show Jost what kind of background I like to get. Notice how nice and white the walls and blinds are, though Brian is looking a little blue in the face.
So here I’ve slapped a Color Temperature Orange Gel (CTO) onto my 580ex. I took this to show how I’ve effectively changed the light in my flash to match the color temperature of the room.
All we need to do now is tell the camera that orange light is actually white (Kelvin set to 3000K) and now we have the ideal exposure.
Yeah, seeing them side by side makes a big difference. I love having good white balancing, since I’m always shooting JPEG. But this applies to you RAW shooters out there too. Imagine, the RAW file only has the first two images as options.
April 23rd, 2009at 10:44 pm(#)
YEAH GAVmaster!! What a great visual lesson! You have PERFECT color in that last image!! WOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!! Does Jost look annoyed a little bit?
April 24th, 2009at 12:07 am(#)
Yeah those are great pics of me Gavin thx! lol Next time you want to post me let me know and i’ll smile for you ; )
August 7th, 2009at 8:14 pm(#)
Great walk thru on the gels and color balancing. Nice job!
August 7th, 2009at 8:15 pm(#)
Actually, can you also walk thru how you found 3k to be the right temp for the ‘ideal’ shot, before using gel?
August 7th, 2009at 11:06 pm(#)
incandescent is at 3200K, which is usually a little too orange for me in most rooms. I like to bump it down to 3000K or 2800K to knock most of it out. I’ll also drop it down to 2600K if the walls are too tan or orange-ish, such as in a hotel banquet room that is using no fluorescent lighting (green tints suck). Use a 3-color RGB histogram (most new SLRs have this in their options) for the info display, as opposed to brightness. That will let you more easily determine if the image it to orange (look at the red histo). I never trust the LCD, since color reproduction varies on the brightness, room lighting, and whether or not my eyes have been abused all day from shooting.