How do you know when to use 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 or full CTO?

breal101 wrote in post #5730124
Robert, Wilt probably has it pretty close. Naturally personal taste is a big factor so I am looking forward to another test to see what you come up with. As an aside I was wondering if you had posted your impressions of the D300 somewhere, I don't want to hijack your thread with this but if you have a link I would be interested.

Just to follow up on the aside...
I never did a review of the D300 but it's an incredible machine. If you want more detail just send me a PM.

And n ow back to our regularly scheduled program.

TMR Design wrote in post #5730001
As much as I want to understand this topic very thoroughly I do want to point out that my original intent was not so much to precisely balance flash against ambient light, but rather to give my subjects a pleasing warm skin tone. In my examples above, I found that either 1/8 or 1/4 seems to give me what I want and it's just a question of whether I get those same effects outdoors or if I need to go to a stronger CTO.

Whether something is necessary, in my opinion, is a relative and subjective thing since we all see things differently and have a different creative eye with different technical skills and requirements.

You can just drag the orange saturation slider to the right in Bridge/Lightroom if you want to do it the easy way

Hi Tim,

I'm really not looking for alternatives. Not trying to be rude but I know how to use Photoshop and Lightroom and can do all these things easily. I process when I have to or need to but when I don't have to process in software I don't care to do that.

Adding a gel is simple and it gives me what I want in terms of the subject lighting. Moving a slider in any software will adjust the entire image, so that means I'm creating layer masks and painting. I do enough of that.

If those other methods work for you then that's great but I'm all about capturing images as best as I can in the camera.

TMR Design wrote in post #5733669
Adding a gel is simple and it gives me what I want in terms of the subject lighting. Moving a slider in any software will adjust the entire image, so that means I'm creating layer masks and painting. I do enough of that.

It is more interesting to do things in "real life". I wonder what will become of photography when PhotoShop makes masking and layering even easier...

I think we'll always see 2 schools of thought. There will be the old school photographers and purists that work on capturing the image as they envision it, and they will take the extra time in setup, metering, composition, etc.

The other school will capture the image as is, shoot in RAW, and fix and change whatever is not to their liking, adding the things that they didn't get in the image as shot. Software will get increasingly more powerful, as will the cameras we use.

Just suggesting an option. I have a set of gels in my camera bag that I use, my aim is to reduce my PP time as much as possible.

TMR Design wrote in post #5733925
I think we'll always see 2 schools of thought. There will be the old school photographers and purists that work on capturing the image as they envision it, and they will take the extra time in setup, metering, composition, etc.

The other school will capture the image as is, shoot in RAW, and fix and change whatever is not to their liking, adding the things that they didn't get in the image as shot. Software will get increasingly more powerful, as will the cameras we use.

You make it sound so "polar"....as if only one is right and the other wrong.

Seems to me that one uses the tools available and/or which work for them.

Ansel Adams was "old school"....most often, his prints have significant difference to his negatives.

TMR Design wrote in post #5733925
I think we'll always see 2 schools of thought. There will be the old school photographers and purists that work on capturing the image as they envision it, and they will take the extra time in setup, metering, composition, etc.

The other school will capture the image as is, shoot in RAW, and fix and change whatever is not to their liking, adding the things that they didn't get in the image as shot. Software will get increasingly more powerful, as will the cameras we use.

Yeah, I think you're right TMR. I learned photography the old fashioned way but was young and assisting during the switch over to digital...so I have a good grip on the two schools of thought.

To be honest, I think the real differences are still format. Generally, the 35mm shooters are heavy into PP and medium and large format shooters are usually more traditional.

Just an observation, but the lower resolution of 35mm files often requires some PP tricks to jazz them up....while the higher resolution of medium and large format can still look interesting using the more traditional methods

Hope that makes sense...I guess my point is that the real separation for me is still format....35mm shooters are often heavy into PP tricks while medium format shooters are usually a bit more tradition. (not always true, but a good general observation)

I really want to get into medium format...but just can't afford an H3 right now...maybe next year

Color matching for me has been hit and miss. When I use gels it's to match my flashes with available light for candids, photojournalism and (now) real estate photos. In the latter, I'm finding the nvision daylight balanced fluorescent 5500k light bulbs to be of great assistance, and I'm not even needing CTOs on my flashes to get a very-close-to-perfect white balance, matching daylight, flash and lamp lights.

My opinion about portrait use of CT gels is that most people I have worked for do not prefer the extra warm tone, and neither do my eyes. When I have used a blue background it causes their skin to have a more pinkish appearance by dint of contrasting colors, which is great. When I use a grey background there is less color contrast, and any extra orange seems to turn the photo in the wrong direction. I also have to whiten eyes and teeth (more) if the balance is off.

jrsforums wrote in post #5734864
You make it sound so "polar"....as if only one is right and the other wrong.

Seems to me that one uses the tools available and/or which work for them.

Ansel Adams was "old school"....most often, his prints have significant difference to his negatives.

Hi John,

In no way did I intend to give you or anyone else the impression that I was stating right and wrong. My observation in these and other forums is just what I said. I see 2 schools of thought. I never said anything about one way being right or better.

I prefer to get it right in camera. It's that simple. Since I started the post asking about using CTO gels I wanted to get answers and input about that topic. So, to talk about layers and masks in Photoshop and moving sliders in Lightroom is all well and good but does not address the question posed. I stated that as well but never make any comments about it being wrong... just not what I would like to be doing.

On the topic of schools of thought, let me put it this way for everyone...

Black and white shooters would try to expose the negative 'right on', then they adjust contrast and brightness in the printing process.

Zone System shooters would intensively analyze the scene, then shoot it to capture the shot in a manner conducive to compensating certain areas of the scene, process the film in a manner different than the developer manufacturer's instructions, then they adjust contrast and brightness in the printing process.

And most people would simply shoot, take the film to the store processor, and look at the prints that came back, balanced by the machine!

So how does ANY of the preceding sound any different than today?...

Conventional dSLR shooters would try to expose the negative 'right on', then they adjust contrast and brightness, etc. with photo editing software like Photoshop .

Shoot-to-right shooters would shoot, intensively analyze the histogram, then reshoot it to capture the shot in a manner conducive to better capturing the shadow areas of the scene wihtout blowing out the highlights, process the RAW to raise shadow area to have a bit more detail and reduce the highlight areas to show more detail, then they adjust contrast and brightness in the RAW conversion to JPEG process.

And most people would simply shoot in JPEG, and look at the images that came out, balanced by the camera's processor (and might never use a photo editor program)


The digital world is NOT unlike the film world in most regards, apart from how many shots go thru cameras of so many users, wearing out the shutters in a year or two.

Thank you Wilt. That makes a lot of sense.

I do think that digital photography is helping to create a large bunch of fussbudgets (to use cartonoonist Charles Schultz's Peanuts comment about Lucy).

All off this fuss about White Balance and shooting to the right. In the past, a color shooter would pick a film for its color pallette, then accept what the drugstore machine provided (which often was quite wrong!) or accept the end result of what the pro lab thought was right. Seldom (relatively speaking) would people shoot Macbeth charts and gray cards, and then ask the lab to exactly match the swatches for color balance. Now people agonize about white balance, selection of suitable white or neutral gray in each photo to adjust, exactly matching artificial light to ambient (rather than merely making an aesthetically pleasing photo), or simplistically trying to shoot to the right with a 9 f/stop range of scene fitting into a 7-8 f/stop scale (when the top of the range does not matter to the shot!).

People should first try to make AESTHETICALLY good photos, and worry about the technical tweaks as a secondard consideration, IMHO. The average viewer does not know what to look for, in the technical garp, they know what pleases them! And that is how I arrived at my choice of 1/8 CTO and 1/4 CTO...the electronic flash is cooler than daylight, so I neutralize it (Key light) first with 1/8 CTO. Then I try to flatter the bride with a touch of warmth, adding another 1/8 CTO to end up with 1/4 CTO on my Fill. My Dynalite studio lights in softboxes give me the same touch of warmth without the supplemental use of gel. I didn't try to match the warming from the softbox with a specific CTO value. Artistically motivated adjustment, not technically cold clinical approach to things.

And again, thanks. I see it as you do. I want to warm up my subject lighting and I'm not all the concerned about matching flash to ambient color temperature.

Back in my lab days printing custom enlargements for professionals, I found that the large majority of people prefer the warm look. I agree with Wilt, WB was a crapshoot with film, even slide film processing was different from lab to lab. Out of control processors were not uncommon. It's all about getting what looks best to you and your customers.