{"id":12920,"date":"2013-01-06T23:21:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T03:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=12920"},"modified":"2017-08-11T20:58:22","modified_gmt":"2017-08-12T00:58:22","slug":"colored-gels-with-flash-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/colored-gels-with-flash-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"Colored gels with flash photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Colored gels with flash photography<\/h1>\n

I met Jessica Joy during a photo shoot-out in Las Vegas last year when a group of photographers and models met up. She was there as both a photographer and a model. We had discussed doing a proper photo session some time in the future … and then Jessica got news that her husband will be stationed abroad in a few months from now. So we decided that *now* was the time to do this.<\/p>\n

With winter-time in New Jersey and New York just too cold to comfortably do a photo shoot outdoors, we settled on doing it as a studio shoot.<\/p>\n

I bought two sets of the Honl gels for speedlights a long while back, to try out sometime, but they remained unused in a drawer. I had the two sets of colored gels – the\u00a0Honl Photo Filter Kit\u00a0–\u00a0Hollywood<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>); and the\u00a0Honl Photo Filter Kit\u00a0–\u00a0Autumn<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>). What made me curious about them originally, was that they were inexpensive, but seemed like a good option in juicing up flash photos a bit.<\/p>\n

The first test image with the lights set up like I wanted, looked good … but a little drab. First I added a gel to a gridded softbox to the left of her (with the blue-green tone), and then I added a filter to the flash on the background … and \u00a0I was hooked!<\/p>\n

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One of the initial photos, done as a test. The blue-green gel helped add a splash of color to the near monochrome image. And then I added a warm gel to the flash on the backdrop .. and the image sprang to life.<\/p>\n

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On the left is the very first test image with the warm background. On the right, the final image as shown at the top.<\/p>\n

The background was too bright for my liking, so I dropped the flash output on the background by a stop, and upped the main flash’s exposure by a stop. Similarly, the blue-green gelled flash was also upped by a stop to still be at the same level, relative to the main light. The total effect was to drop the background light by two stops, compared to the main light.<\/p>\n

Here is the pull-back shot to show the lighting setup:<\/p>\n

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The surrounding areas are very dark in comparison to the lit areas, so the placements of the lights isn’t too clear. So here is a version of the same image, with local adjustments to lighten up the darker areas. (Excuse the uneven brushing in of details in the shadowed areas.)<\/p>\n

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The main light<\/strong> is a Profoto head with a 7″ reflector and 10 degree grid on it. Using it fairly close to her, the light was hard, but not unflattering. Similar to a video light in a way. The grid is there to control the spill of light, so that there is a dramatic fall-off to the edges, and Jessica’s arms and the rest of her body are shrouded in shade.<\/p>\n

The flash-head is a Profoto 600R initially, but I later changed it out for a Profoto D1 500 Ws head.<\/p>\n

The rim light<\/strong> is via the gelled speedlight in the gridded softbox to the right of our model. The grid really does wonders in controlling the spill of the light.<\/p>\n

Background light:<\/strong> On the left-hand side, you can see the bare speed light that is gelled with the warm color. The background itself is a grey paper roll backdrop. Splashing a colored gel onto it gave it that tone. The speedlight is on a lightstand, and was hooked up to another gridded softbox, but I swiveled the head around, so that it is just the bare speedlight on the background.<\/p>\n

I metered for the main light, but the others lights were adjusted to taste by looking at the camera’s preview.<\/p>\n

camera settings for the image at the top:
\n1\/200 @ f\/8 @ 200 ISO<\/p>\n

The final result with the gels impressed me. Even more so in that they were easy to use and added a lot of glitz to the final image. And they are inexpensive. The gels were attached to the flash with a\u00a0Honl Speed-strap<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>) on each speedlight.<\/p>\n

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Photo gear\u00a0(or equivalents) used during this photo session<\/h2>\n