I have a tota light kit which I have been using in a studio type set up where there are no windows. I'm starting to do more and more location shots where there is daylight coming in. Rather than gel the lights, whats the feasibility of geling the windows?

Three pertinent questions:

1. How many windows
2. How large are they?
3. How much money do you have? :)


Gelling windows is usually not too hard. But they can require a lot of film, and that doesn't come cheap. Which is why you see a lot more people gelling lights.

The biggest commodity for me when gelling windows after money for a lot of ND, is time. It takes some serious time, especially on multi-pane windows on older houses and buildings where you have to gel a bunch of little "windows" that are really just one big piece of glass but there are separator pieces and borders. PITA and takes all day to do a good job.

I switched to LEDs, fluorescents for jobs like these or sometimes HMIs.

Dan

Three pertinent questions:

1. How many windows
2. How large are they?
3. How much money do you have? :)


Gelling windows is usually not too hard. But they can require a lot of film, and that doesn't come cheap. Which is why you see a lot more people gelling lights.
This, indeed.

I would only gel windows in a case where there was more tungsten than window. I have actually used windows as a blue backlight before, it's kind of a nice effect at times.

While it's often a hassle, it's pretty inexpensive (around $100 bucks) to buy a full roll of combo CTO and 2 stop ND from someone like Lee Filters.

I keep one in the studio and on a few occasions, it's enabled shots in otherwise impractical locations.

Particularly executive offices where you can have the Exec sit at their desk, and simply put the roll on one end in the window well - gaff it at a couple of points, ROLL it out across the window horizontally, tape the top and let static cling do the rest. (this presumes you can limit head height of the shot to no higher than the top of the window - usually pretty easy.)

The resulting shot can look a lot like you lugged HMI's into the office and blinded the poor talent - and it's cheap to boot!

It *can* be a quick solution if the circumstances are right.

Just another tool in the kit deployed when conditions are right.

FWIW.

Thanks for the input everyone. Mike the scenario of having more tungsten then window is exactly what I was thinking about.