Anyone managed to gel a HiLite to get a grey background?

Although I have a separate grey background that I could light from the front or side, it would be convenient for me if I could gel the strobe in my Lastolite HiLite to get a fairly uniform grey. I just started playing around with this and haven't had much luck yet. So I'm wondering if anyone has done it and how they did it. Thanks.

Huh??? Grey is simply something less than white and more than black...controlled via lighting intensity, no gelling required.

Wilt wrote in post #7992029
Huh??? Grey is simply something less than white and more than black...controlled via lighting intensity, no gelling required.

You beat me to it Wilt.

Take a look at the first two sample images in this thread:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=415671

The first was no background light, the second was with a background light that rendered the midnight grey seamless a light grey. To get something in-between, I could have dialed down the power on the background light.

OK, I guess I'm dense. I have a medium grey collapsible muslin background that I've used with varying background lighting intensity (projected onto the grey background) to get everything from black to nearly white. I understand that concept. Where I'm confused is in using the Lastolite HiLite to get a medium grey background. I'm using a Dlite-4 in the HiLite. So it's easy to get pure white. At the Dlite's lowest setting, I'm still getting a dull white background. Since I had played with gels to get various shades of blues and greens for backgrounds in the HiLite, I was wondering if I could do something similar to get a medium grey. I even had some grey gels in my collection to try. Using my darkest grey gel, the lowest setting of the Dlite, good separation between subject and background with a grid on my main light to prevent spill onto the background, and shooting at my highest sync speed, the background still doesn't look grey. It's a washed out, greyish-white look. I didn't try just using the modeling light inside the HiLite without firing the strobe, but it sounds like I'm just missing something basic here.

so, your light is too much to get low enough power to make the gray you want?
then using a neutral density gel is the way to go.
a .3 ND is one stop a .6 is two stops and a . 9 is three stops.

or, if possible, move the light farther from the backdrop.
if it is at eight feet, and you move to 12 feet, you drop a stop;
16 feet, two stops...

I think you are confusing things. It is not the intensity of the bg light or distance.

Let us say that bg is at f8 for pure white. If you shoot awith camer at f8 it will show up as pure white. Now stop down the camera to f11, it won't be pure white, stop down to f16 and it be more gray. So as long as your white bg is below the subject exposure, it will show up as gray instead of white. How much gray you control by the difference between subject and bg expsure. If the difference between the two exposure is large, white will show as black on camera, even if it is white when you look at it.

Think just opposite of when you trying to make your bg as pure white. You can make black/gray white if you throw more light on the bg when compared to your subject/camera exposure. You can have your bg lights at lowest power settings or highest, it does't matter.

And that is the third option.

I didn't mention it because I was presuming you needed/wanted a particular aperture.

a fourth option, if it is available, is High Speed flash synch. For this your light fall of is controlled by the shutter speed.

that is for the same distance and aperture, a higher shutterspeed will reduce the background exposure.

this is generally only available with the system flashes or the new Pocket Wizards

Google Inverse square law. Once I learned it everything suddenly made perfect sense.

evolved wrote in post #7998731
Google Inverse square law. Once I learned it everything suddenly made perfect sense.

Can you please tell us how?

bobbyz wrote in post #7999199
Can you please tell us how?

http://www.google.com …re+law&btnG=Goo​gle+Search

For those unfamiliar with the Lastolite Hilite, it's basically a collapsible box with a light inside. It's designed to make a blown white backround. Take a look:
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …ch&shs=Lastolit​e%20Hilite

For the OP: Have you tried turning the background light off? An unlit white background will usually come out light grey, since it catches light from the main and fill but is further away from the lights than the subject.

If the background is still too bright for your taste without any background lighting, then there's no way to make it darker by adding light. You'll need to either use a darker background material or move it back further so it catches less from the main and fill.

evolved wrote in post #7999474
http://www.google.com …re+law&btnG=Goo​gle+Search

Pointing to search results for Inverse Square Law doesn't really help and certainly doesn't answer Bobby's question as to how that cleared everything up for you.

Curtis N wrote in post #7999559
For those unfamiliar with the Lastolite Hilite, it's basically a collapsible box with a light inside. It's designed to make a blown white backround. Take a look:
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …ch&shs=Lastolit​e%20Hilite

For the OP: Have you tried turning the background light off? An unlit white background will usually come out light grey, since it catches light from the main and fill but is further away from the lights than the subject.

If the background is still too bright for your taste without any background lighting, then there's no way to make it darker by adding light. You'll need to either use a darker background material or move it back further so it catches less from the main and fill.

Whereas Curtis's response does help the OP.

As Wilt said in the first reply of this thread, rendering any shade of black, gray or white is just a matter of the quantity of light. Isolating the subject area is a matter of the distance from subject to background. Since we know that a meter, whether handheld or in-camera is trying to render everything as middle gray, if the exposure on the background is the same as the subject area then you'll have a middle gray background. Any exposure above the subject area will move closer to white and any exposure below the subject area will be closer to black.

OK. Thanks for the help with this. I appreciate it. It's finally sinking in. I'll do more experimenting now that I think I understand it better.