The Mod Holiday Tree

The Mod Holiday Tree is here, baby.

What, No "Dusky Rose"?

I believe that flash gels and lipsticks are named by the same person.

Flash Color Correction: A Quick and Dirty Example

Above: a quick demo of the effect of color correction gels on a hotshoe flash.

You can put any sort of gel on the head of a hotshoe flash. Attach a blue gel, for example, and you can turn a white wall into a blue background. Easy.

The more refined skill to master, though, is using color correction gels.

The idea: put the right gel on your flash so that the light from your flash matches the ambient light in a location.

Shooting in someone's living room at night? You're probably seeing tungsten-balanced lights. Add a Full CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel and the light from your flash will change from daylight-balanced (5500k) to tungsten-balanced / indoor (3200k). Or, maybe you need a bit less: a 1/2 CTO or just a 1/4 CTO.

Shooting in an office? Add a Full+Green and your flash will better match the greenish light the overhead fluorescents probably provide.

Shooting in open shade outside? The light is probably quite blue in color temperature ... so put a 1/2 CTB (Color Temperature Blue) on your flash.

Now, that's step one.

The quick example above is a reminder how the gels change the look of the light -- in a shot that is white-balanced for about 6000k. (That's not a magic number -- it is just a match for the light present for the first, ungelled shot.)

So, you've done step one: you've matched your flash to the color temperature of the ambient light.

What's step two? Change your white balance to match.

So, let's say you are in a living room at night: gel your flash (with CTO) and then set your White Balance to 3200k (or "indoor" or "tungsten).

Try it out.

September?

How the heck did it get to be September? I mean ... it's almost Fall?

A new term, new classes ... a lot going on. But September? Really?

Above: a little experimentation with flash gels.

Just Blue

In yesterday's post I mentioned using a Honl "Just Blue" gel to turn a white wall into a blue background ... so here's that gel. You buy a velcro strap (Honl sells a good one, or Opteka makes a cheaper but not-quite-as-good "clinch band") and put that around the head of your flash. Then you stick the gel -- which has those little velcro fasteners on it -- on the flash head, attached to the velcro band. Honl sells the gels in little kits, so you can get color correction gels, color effects gels, or a "sampler" with both.

Living Room Self Portrait with a Softlighter II

I needed to make a quick self-portrait photo, but I wanted see if I could do it without heavy, full-size studio equipment. So I decided to try an all-hotshoe-flash technique using just what was in my camera bag and only lightweight, portable gear.

I grabbed my Nissin 466 first. That's a small, lightweight flash designed to work with Micro Four Thirds cameras. It's got a reasonable Guide Number of 36 and decent features, but is scaled down to match M43 cameras. I put it on its base stand, and wrapped a Honl Speed Strap around the flash head. That let me velcro on a Honl "Just Blue" color gel and point it up at a boring white wall to create the background blue I wanted. It has two "optical slave" modes -- you can set it to fire when it "sees" a flash pop, or, because TTL flash often uses a "pre-flash" you can set it to work with that.

Then, I wanted a softbox look without feeling like I was putting together a camping tent. So, I grabbed my Softlighter II. It packs small (it's really like an umbrella with one extra piece of fabric) and it is really lightweight despite being really large -- its the 60-inch model, which can light two people reasonably well. (More importantly, it sets up fast -- open the umbrella, attach the diffusion cover and you're done.)

What light to put inside? I didn't want to drag out a monolight kit. So, after I put the Softlighter on a lightweight light stand, I put an adapter on the top of the stand and attached my Metz 58 hotshoe flash. It's bigger than that Nissin, but it's got plenty of power -- Guide Number 58, a match for the Canon 580 ex II or the top Nikon flashes. It's enough, at a setting of 1/8th power, to easily fill the Softlighter at the level I'd need for a portrait and it's still relatively small and lightweight compared to a monolight.

How to trigger it? I put a Cactus V5 transceiver under the flash and set it to "receiver" -- then I picked a channel, grabbed another Cactus V5 and set it to "transmitter" and the same channel. I put that on top of my Panasonic GH1 and set the camera on a lightweight tripod. The GH1 was right in the spirit of what I was doing -- it's tiny, lightweight, good at reasonable ISO settings, and I particularly like it because of its video capabilities.

For a head-and-shoulders portrait, I like my Leica 45mm f/2.8. This is a fantastic lens that is underappreciated in the Micro Four Thirds community. (If you read the photo forums, you'd get the impression that this is the most unusable, expensive lens ever -- and nothing could be further from the truth. It's a great lens, priced at a match for its quality (but not expensive compared to most Leica lenses), and really really usable. Small, lightweight, sharp wide open at f/2.8, and just perfect for this type of shot.)

I metered using a Sekonic L-308DC. That's the newer model that does ambient, flash and now "Digital Cinema" mode, which makes metering for recording video with your DSLR or mirrorless camera a bit easier.

I forgot to include one detail in my lighting diagram below: if you check out the catch lights in the eyes, you'll see I also threw a small reflector on the floor to add a touch of fill.

Now: I just need a good retoucher....

Cap'n Crunch

A while back, I explained how to use color correction gels to match your flash to the color temperature present in a room.

Another quick-and-dirty solution: flash caps.

Using your flash in a room with "tungsten" lights? These have a color temperature about 3200k, and your flash puts out light about 5500k. To match the two sources, use an gold or amber or yellow cap to "warm up" your flash, then set your white balance to "indoor" or "tungsten."

Using your flash in a room with overhead fluorescent lights? These are often 3800k, but with a greenish cast. Use a green cap to make your flash match the fluorescents, then set your white balance to "fluorescent."

That's kinda simple. It's effective, though.

Use the gels when you need precision -- when you just have to get the color perfect -- and the caps when "close enough, but fast" is the way to go.

Golden, Part Two (Kodak Millennium 2000)

I wanted a quick snap of my Kodak "Millennium 2000" camera -- there's a long story I'll tell about that camera another time -- and decided the best way to bring out its gold color would be to put a dash of electric blue right behind it. But ... how?

I grabbed my Metz 58 hotshoe flash, two Opteka straps, my Opteka 1/8th inch grid and a Honl "Just Blue" gel. First, I attached the two Opteka clinch bands to my Metz. (Why two? With just one band, the grid doesn't really secure all that well. It stays on, but doesn't instill confidence at all.)

Then, I attached the Just Blue gel to the upper band (it has velcro hooks) and put the Opteka Grid on over that.

I set the Metz to manual mode, the zoom setting to 105mm and the power level to 1/256th. (My camera exposure was ISO 400, 1/125th of a second, f/2.8.)

Well, okay. But ... why?

Here's the idea: a "grid" attachment modifies light usually to form a nice circle with soft edges. That is, if you send light through the grid and point it at a wall, the light is full strength in the middle, then falls off in a circular pattern -- usually falling off gently. So, it's a great way to make a circle or oval of light or color behind someone or something. Want more of an oval? Put the light low and angle it up onto the background or wall (or do the same thing from the side or above.)

Here's the set up:

Gelling Your Flash

Recently, I've had to use gels on my flash for both color correction and for effects.

It occurred to me that, if someone is interested in gelling their flash, they may easily be led astray by the "advice" they find on photo forums. You know, those same people who tell you to use the bottom of a 2-liter soda bottle instead of a Gary Fong diffuser. They're out there, in the forums, and telling everyone to ...

• buy big sheets of color gel material and velcro fasteners
• spend all day cutting the gel material into strips and carefully attaching the velcro
• somehow label the gels so you'll be able to figure out which one is the full "Color Temperature Orange" and which one is the 1/2 "Color Temperature Orange" during the pressure of a shoot, in the dark.

Great. Because you need to spend hours doing that to save about $20. Nothing like work that equals about $5 an hour and looks kinda shoddy at the end of the day. Let me save you the time, but cost you about $50. First, know what you want to do. The idea is this:

The Problem:
 Your flash puts out light that is pretty close to the color temperature of 5500k. So if you go into an office and want to use it to augment light coming from overhead fluorescent panels (which are kinda green if you shoot them with Daylight white balance instead of Fluorescent white balance), you may find a mismatch that can create color casts somewhere in the image. Or, if you go into someone's living room and want to add to the light coming from their table lamp (possibly balanced for 3200k) you will have to choose to set your white balance to match your flash or to match the lamp -- which can mean either a blue or yellow cast in some areas of the image.

The Solution:
Put a gel on your flash to match it to the existing light in the space. Then, you can set your white balance to match. In other words, in an office you would make your flash a bit green to match the greenish light fluorescents put out, and set your white balance to Fluorescent. In a living room, you would gel your flash to make its light close to 3200k color temperature, so it matches the living room lamp, and then set your white balance to "Indoor" or "Tungsten."

So what you need is the right gel -- and you can get custom made ones for relatively cheap, and quickly attach them to your flash. (And then, if you want to explore the world of "painting with light" or other color trickery, you can get additional gels to work with.)

Here's what I recommend:

1. Get a Honl Speed Strap.
This is just a strip that wraps on the head of your flash -- it's basically one size fits all for any hotshoe flash -- and that gels can be Velcroed to.




2. Get a set of Honl Color Correction Gels.
These come with a two of each of the important gels for making your flash match the conditions you'll find in the world. They attach quickly and easily to the strap, and take up almost no space in your camera bag. Adding flash to an office shot? No problem. Adding flash to a living room shot? No problem. Purposefully warming up a shot? No problem.




3. Later, get a set of Honl Color Effects Gels.
Then, you can spend hours in the dark, playing with light.




As an example, the image on this page was made with a "Bright Red" gel and a "Just Blue" -- I set my camera on a tripod, darkened the room, set my aperture to f/11 and the shutter speed to 8 seconds. I held my flash in my hand and then manually fired it in varying positions -- set on low power -- a few times with each gel.