Using Gels

In reading an article in Scott Kelby's book "The Digital Photography Book volume 2, it talks about "Using Gels to get that SI look. It states that you set your white balance to Tungsten lighting, put a yellow gel to the flash. You are shooting a person (holding a basketball in his example), with the sky on the background around dusk. The background will have a darker blue background (from the Tungsten white balance) and the person will have a natural skin tone (from the yellow gel).

A few questions;

1. Does this make sense.

2. I was looking a Lumiquest FX to keep the gel off the flash. Do you think this is a good way or a waste of money. ( http://www.adorama.com …=lumiquest%20FX​&item_no=1 )

3. Are there certain type or brand names of gels that I should use.

I appreciate any thoughts or comments you may have.

Thanks,
Mark

Yes, it makes sense. When you adjust the camera white balance to be "wrong" you can alter the colour balance in the image in the same way as sliding the hue slider in an hsv adjustment. Then you light whatever you want to look "normal" with a gelled light, or cross-gel for effects.

The lumiquest thing looks good but unnecessary - velcro on the flash head and gels is all you need really. It's not that easy to melt a gel.

Rosco or Lee gels have a good reputation, but I expect they are all much the same.

Ps. You wouldn't use a yellow gel in the situation you described, you'd use a CTO (colour tone orange) which corrects daylight to a tungsten white balance.

Enjoy playing with gelled lights.

Thanks for the response.

A couple of follow up questions.

In looking at the Adorama web-site, I searched Rosco CTO. It took me to this page ..http://www.adorama.com …ts&searchinfo=r​osco%20cto . In trying to mimic the set up in my original post, which CTO gel is best 1/4, 1/8 and are these the filters that I need.

Also, if you use the velcro, how do you attach the gel to the velcro?

Thanks

That very look was the last "assignment" on strobist.com. Look there for more discussion. As for getting gels to use on your flash, purchase a rosco sample pack online. They are just a little bigger than the lens of a flash and can be easily mounted with gaffer tape or under the flip down wideangle lens or a million other ways.

I use sticky backed hook and loop velcro - I just stick one side to my flash head, then all the gels have a bit of the other side stuck to them.

1/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO etc. just mean that much CTO. A full (1/1) cto turns daylight to tungsten WB, so a 1/2 goes half way there, sometimes you might for example use a full to correct to tungsten, then an additional 1/4 or 1/2 over the top of that to actually warm the light rather than correct to neutral. I suspect the original setup you're talking about used a full CTO, usually just called CTO without any number.

As tmcman said a rosco sample pack might be a good start, as it'd good to have a selection of gels and they are cheap - I used flashgels.co.uk to get mine being in the UK but in the US I believe B&H and Adorama sell the rosco sample packs, in fact, if I remember rightly one of those do a sample pack for 1c when you order anything else.

Try googling "lighting 101" for the strobist introduction pages, and the strobist discussion group at http://www.flickr.com/​groups/strobist/discus​s/ is a great resource for learning about lighting - sorry I can't be more help with where to buy in the US, I'm sure you'll find a lot more info on strobist.