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CTB gels plus umbrellas?
Hello All,
I am working on a shoot where I have a mix of outdoor light and incandescent lights. I plan to gel the lights with 1/2 or full blue to balance with the outdoor light, but I’d also like put umbrellas on the lights to help me avoid harsh shadows. Is there any reason why it is bad practice to use both gels and umbrellas together?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions! -
5 Replies
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There’s nothing wrong with the idea, per se, at least not in theory. The challenge though is that when battling daylight you’re also needing a lot of artificial light at the same time… and the CTB drastically cuts the output from your instruments, so they might not do you a lot of good unless they are really powerful instruments and close enough to the subject. When you add the diffusion of the umbrellas, that just compounds the output problems.
But yes, you can do it.
If gelling an instrument and adding an umbrella is a little clunky, you can kill two birds with one stone with a blue color-correcting umbrella that does both… we have a couple of them….
…but honestly I never use them because just like blue-gelling a fixture they cut the output by so much that they are not very useful. I think I’ve used them once, maybe twice.
In an instance like that, when I need to supplement (or battle) daylight but I still want it soft, I invariably use an HMI bounced onto a white 4×4 bounce card… that’s my go-to setup for something like that. Not much else will give enough firepower.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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What about bouncing the light off a blue-tinted silver reflector board? Gives you the softness and the color correction.
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That works, too. You an also just lay a sheet of gel on your bounce board, too… i.e. if you have big uncut sheets and don’t want to hack into them. You have to remember that doubles them, though… 1/4 CTB becomes 1/2, 1/2 becomes full, etc… as the light is going through them twice.
You’ll still need some BIGass instruments though if you are using tungsten to combat or augment daylight.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Thanks Todd & Mark. I really appreciate your feedback. The room that I’m shooting in has big windows on two sides so there will be a ton of sunlight and hopefully I’ll only need some balanced lights to create a good feel. I’ll try the gel + bounce board approach for sure.
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If you can bounce the actual sunlight coming in, you won’t need the gels.
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