Gel Question

[Pat Sherman]

Greetings,

I have a Lowel VIP Light kit with two pro lights and two omni lights, some umbrellas and the gels.

I was wondering about the gels and how they are supposed to work. My from my understanding if I shoot a scene that has natural daylight in the scene and I am also lighting it I should use a blue gel?

How about if I am shooting under overhead flouresents(sic) is their a gel I should use to match those?

Just curious.. I do alot of interview style shoots and well I don't think this kit works the best for that, but it's all I got..:)

[Samuel Birkan]

Here is a small exerpt from this article

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=8880&PageNum=5

Gels (Filters): Gels are plastic film sheets placed in front of a light to change its characteristics. For example, if you were using late-afternoon light streaming in from a window as a key light and needed a fill light to match its color, you would place a blue gel over an incandescent bulb to make it match the sun. Conversely, if you needed sunlight streaming into a room to match halogen lighting in the scene, you would place a straw or orange gel over the window. Similarly, if bright light streaming in from a window produced too much backlighting, you could apply a neutral density gel to reduce the light's intensity without changing the color a neutral density gel. To be honest, I've not worked that much with gels, primarily because rolls of gel suitable for use with windows are expensive, and the the brittle gel sheets are tough to attach to my ad hoc lighting gear. For indoor shooting, it's easier for me to just match the color of my fluorescent and halogen bulbs. Rosco also sells gels and has an excellent downloadable guide called the Rosco Guide to Color Filters accessible from the Technotes section of their Web site (www.rosco.com/main.html). If you need these capabilities, I recommend this as a start.

[Richard Veil]

the news people use omni lights all the time for fill outside with a 1/2blue or full ctb gel.
dv white balance lets you use the 1/2 ctb so you only lose about 1/2 stop of light yet can balance for daylight.

clip them on your barndoors.

you can also light background with color gels

and then light subject seperate... grids 8000 kit for control flags ect

I hope this helps

r

[Rush Hamden]

Hi Pat, in response to specifically what you would use with fluorescents, you would use "Plus-Green" gels in the same grades as the CTB (Color Temp Blue): 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, Full, depending on the color temp of that type of fluoro bulb. They add green in grades so that your 3200 deg K bulb can rise to 4000-4400 deg K.

Your ViP light is just as good as any light out there, you just need to make sure to have barndoors to clip gels to it. You can use simple clothespins as clips, and some barndoors have ready-attached clips.