Flash Gels for Color Correction | Ask David Bergman

Today's question from Gary J. is, "In the old days of film, we would take indoor social club flash pictures and would correct the pictures by using colored gels. The idea was to deliver a perfect exposure with the flash and use the gels to correct for the color of the background. It seems so long ago that I can't remember if the gel was on the flash, the lens, or both! Thanks in advance, Gary.”
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✘ PRODUCTS USED:
CLAR Illumi Max 500 High Power 5600K LED Light
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Glow EZ Lock Octa Quick XL Softbox With Bowens Mount (48")
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Canon EOS R Mirrorless Full Frame Digital Camera Body
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MagMod gear
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Rosco Strobist Collection Flash Pack
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✘ PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT USED:
Canon EOS R Mirrorless Full Frame Digital Camera Body
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Canon Control Ring Mount Adapter EF-EOS R
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Canon EF 16-35mm f/4.0L IS USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens
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Manfrotto MT055XPRO3 Black Manfrotto MT055XPRO3 Black Aluminum Tripod with MVH502AH Pro Video Head
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CLAR Illumi Max 500 High Power 5600K LED Light
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Glow EZ Lock Octa Quick XL Softbox With Bowens Mount (48")
www.adorama.com/glsbez48octa....
Zoom H4n Pro Audio Recorder, Black
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#photographytutorial #offcameraflash #adorama
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00:00 Intro
01:12 How Does White Balance Work?
04:26 White Balance in Mixed Lighting
07:50 Adding Flash to Tungsten Lighting
10:00 CTO Gel on Flash for Color Correction
11:54 Color Correction when Shooting Film
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Ask David Bergman Video about Infrared Photography
• Infrared Photography w...
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THANKS SO MUCH FOR WATCHING!

[@bennettandyp]

That was a million dollar answer. No one has ever explained camera Kelvin settings that well.

[@marchinderickx8193]

A step further: if the weather is overcast and you want a blue sky at a wedding, you can use the same principle. White balance Tungsten and CTO gel on the flash. The bride's dress will be white and the sky blue

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Yup. I did a video about that technique a little while ago on IGTV. www.askdavidbergman.com/grey-sky-blue/

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

And another from the two minute tip days: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kKWWd6CFqaqIpqM

[@TamilTop5]

WELL SAID.. THAT WORKED AWESOMELY..❤

[@BoothKatesPhotography]

Thanks, David. Succinct and Informative! I look forward to your videos every week!

[@foilpainterfantasyartist1711]

You explained that really well. Really enjoy your videos, informative and interesting.

[@saharal-yousef8842]

Very helpful ! Thank you for the dominstration .. i just bought those gels and i can't wait to experiment with them👌🏽🙏🏼

[@supranomicon]

Thank you David, I understand this now!- great explanation

[@antpruitt]

Love his lighting in his studio. Always looks awesome

[@brendaorlowski7666]

Thanks for the easy to understand explanation. I just recently purchased the Magmod Bounce and went with the whole kit with all the gels included. Now I can put them to good use. Thanks 😀

[@promokator]

Great lesson! Thank you David 🙂

[@risbill1]

Love using white balance as a creative tool to get a different mood for the available light and then correct for subject with the appropriate gel for a very stylized look.

[@kennypringle4580]

Very good and easy to understand proper need and use of cto gels on flashes. I’ll try this next time I shoot indoors at a very warm colored room.

[@donaldbrocksmith9508]

As usual, excellent David.

[@darj777]

Thank you David. That was very informative...I actually learned a lot just from this video!!!

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Glad to hear!

[@richryanphotography]

FINALLY, the perfect explanation of manually setting the K white balance... I could never understand when to use blue or orange because it always seemed backwards to me.... Fantastic video... I am shooting tomorrow and its going to be a cloudy day, Now I will be able to gel my flash appropriately and get the best WB.... on top of that,... now that I understand it, I can get creative!!!!! Thanks for another AMAZING video!!!

[@ElliotKwan]

Great video! I really needed this

[@upupa_epops_1000]

very well said. i will rewatch again and once u understand the technique then u will be a better photographer for sure. thank you so much.

[@d.l.mcluvin8067]

You always make things so much easier to understand..thx again. D.L.LaBelle

[@user-ry4hj2ix6m]

Thank you for great explanation.

[@charleshacker765]

Wow! That was a loaded question!!!

[@KeithJamesproductions]

Love using a Blue CTB Gel on my flash, set the K on the camera to really Warm, to recreate a Golden hour, when I don’t have one! Thanks.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Awesome. Maybe only a 1/2 CTB so that you don’t remove all the warmth from your subject! :)

[@darinharker21]

Thanks. This is perfect for a shoot that I have next week

[@wetsyenoch7831]

well explained , thanks

[@jimmylee7422]

Cheers David much appreciated

[@bencorwin]

Validation! I use CTO gel on my flash all of the time. For some reason another photographer thought I was a weirdo for doing this. Maybe he thought I could just brush out the background in the RAW editor? Who knows...

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Ugh that would be a nightmare on more than a handful of frames. Hours of post-processing avoided with an inexpensive piece of plastic! :)

[@EntropiaMusic]

Nice one! Thank you!

[@DrSteveMorreale]

Thank you!

[@cesarebonazza]

Perfect thank you :)

[@joem4866]

I, too am one of those old guys from the film days. We used the good ol' 85B filter over the lens when shooting daylight film in tungsten light. This was nice, but it cost you 2 1/2 stops which may have forced a tripod into the mix. To be blunt, they weren't the "Good Old Days". What a pain that was...

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Right? Amazing how much easier technology has made some things.

[@کالیبره]

excellent

[@AdrianBacon]

I’m a super heavy rosco calcolor gel user. I subscribe to the belief that white light is a lie. Even when clients demand a neutral shot, I always work in at least a subtle color shift between the shadows and key light. That’s just how I roll.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Awesome! I went through a phase where I permanently had a 1/4 CTO on my flash to subtly warm up all my subject.

[@AdrianBacon]

@@DavidBergmanPhoto Yeah, for me, it's less about warming the subject. Neutral is relative. Color contrast doesn't always mean warm vs cool. Hence Calcolor. As photographers, we use lighting contrast to make a scene all the time. I add in color contrast of the lighting on top of that. You can still have a scene that is "neutral", but still has color contrast between different elements. I often will shoot one or more images that really are neutral, then shoot the same thing where the scene is centered on the same relative color neutrality, but has at least a little color contrast built in. 9+ times out of 10, the images that have that added color contrast get picked over the totally neutral images.

[@kurtozan251]

That hair light 😍

[@MixiMera]

Great video David! In the eighties I remember that I was about to by a kit with complementary filters and gels to accomplish some special effects. Blue gel - yellow filter etc. I can’t seem to find that anymore. What are they called? Do you have some comments on that?

[@ihknilsen]

Thank you David! Clap On! Clap Off!

[@clydehamilton8138]

Hey David - great video, very helpful. I've heard that in order to have rich saturated colors using a gel the flash should be on low output, like 1/8 or 1/16. You didn't mention that in your video, so I wondered if you agreed. Thanks in advance.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

There is no absolute number as it's relative to your exposure and the other lights. But yes - underexposing the gelled light will give you more saturated color. I did a tip video about this a few years ago here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZCnpp55Zc2Hj9k

[@Lucamitm]

Lets change all the lightbulbs in a reception that shouldn’t take long 😂, jokes aside thanks for the detailed visual explanation !

[@leroyskalstad5871]

Dave, I plan on using flash fill during the golden hour, Would a CTO gell be a good choice during this time of day?

[@AudaryaisticPhotography]

Excellent explanation. My question is what if you used Kelvin 5000 instead of using Tungsten setting, would a gel be still necessary? Would the end result be the same?

[@sherinaw7464]

Thanks for this! But question do you ended up after using the gel, switching to tungsten auto on camera and didn’t use kelvin?

[@TahliRudick]

Hello, thank you for this! I was wondering if you were able to share what would be the best solution for when you are shooting indoors in a space that has window lighting but also has tungsten lighting inside. I typically gauge by what the dominating light is, but I still find that I am getting mixed lighting in this case, it just seems like the type of situation that you can't really do much about, or am I wrong? :-/

[@joellaltanpuia6884]

Sir, can you make a video on how to use Auto Exposure and Exposure lock (AE/EL) on Nikon camera ?

[@tomaskaspar2597]

Thanks you for perfect vid! How do you determine which corection gel/filter (CTO, CTB, fluorescent) to use, when you have only camera (no notebook etc.) to check photos? Do you make your decission based on available exact light source? What about different WB of daylight throughout the day? Next hard thing is to decide which gel intensity to use... this is very difficult topic... Thanks you

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

If you want to be exact, you could use a meter that measures the color temperature. But I bet 99.9% of us just guess and see how it looks. :)

[@anothervisiondl]

hello I shoot a lot in bars where there are constant variations in light, how do I get the correct white balance using flash? I have a Godox TT350s I use ttl mode and a Sony A7III,

[@venturasports]

Is the CTO different than any other orange color gel? Or it "has" to be "CTO" graded?

[@swistedfilms]

Well, maybe *YOU* wouldn't change out those bulbs but I will. I've been careful to replace all my bulbs with daylight balanced LED bulbs. They're more expensive but I really prefer the light they give off. I loathe that nicotine yellow cast that cheaper 2700K bulbs give off. Thanks for the video!

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Hah - sure if you're working in the same location all the time (or have an appropriate budget!) then it's definitely worth it!

[@blueprintz141]

How can I cut down gels from larger sheets. I tried scissors but it’s rough cut. Is there anything that can cut the gels in a shape like a square or circle

[@vperalta]

Complicated subject explained very well. Good thing this wasn't the old Two Minute tips.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Thanks! I love the short format, but some topics just need a bit more time. :)

[@alexmorgillo434]

Hi David! I have a question and I would really appreciate it if you could clarify it for me. If I am photographing in a very large indoor environment in which I must balance the ambient light with the flash light, but I have an extreme situation of lamps with lights at 2800 Kelvin and another at 7000 Kelvin, is it possible to balance these extremes using the CTO or CTB? Thank you for your attention! Thank you very much

[@thomastuorto9929]

Great vid. Would the Color Checker work with the mixed lighting or still use the gels?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Color checker is a great way to get accurate color on your subject, but you still need gels to fix the white balance mismatch.

[@thomastuorto9929]

Thanks.

[@rogats]

Thanks a lot for the video. Just an observation: different from Celsius and Fahrenheit, Kelvins (1:30) are not measured in degrees, so it should be: "5000 Kelvin" or "3500 Kelvin" only . ;)

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Thanks! I actually did not know that and always thought it was also measured in degrees.

[@yeohszehow]

I use gels for lighting my smoke machine's smoke with color from the rear and keeping a normal color for my subject.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Smart! Blue, I’m guessing?

[@yeohszehow]

@@DavidBergmanPhoto yeah....blue color.... I did posted it out on my fb too... you are a saint.....

[@Photor93]

Can't you also take the brush tool in lightroom, brush over your subject and adjust the color temperature? I know this wouldn't be the preferred method, but a one off photo that got messed up from another light could be fixed this way, right?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

You sure can. But as you suggest, you wouldn’t want to have to do that with more than a couple images. Also more natural looking to get it right in camera.

[@blackheartusa]

Do you have a grey card tutorial?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGLcaWyBZ9CcpdU

[@symzg5995]

This may or may not be a silly question, but is ever a situation in which you don't know what the colour type is say at a wedding reception hall??? Also, how would you go about colour matching if they're are multiple colours of light???

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Easiest way to figure it out is to shoot a frame on daylight white balance and see how it looks? With mixed lighting, you either need to balance for the predominant color or don’t worry about it and let things fall where they may. :)

[@besmorpheous]

Damn , was fighting with my white balance in my recent shoot 😅

[@RonsLens]

Clap Clap Clap!

[@xesse1]

This might be a dumb question, but i cant seem to find an answer anywhere. I shoot with studio strobes, softboxes and diffusers, how do i attach colour gels to the flash that way and will it still give the same affect?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Easiest way is simply to tape a large gel to the speeding or anything else you can so it covered most or all of the light. Just make sure the gel isn't directly touching the bulb or you'll have a mess of melted plastic (and a horrible smell!) to clean up.

[@johnnyorellana2534]

Can I ask what is your camera setting for this video and did you shoot in C log and edited the video or a different setting, and one last thing are you using 35mm on your 16-35mm Thanks

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Not shooting log since these videos are relatively simple (color grading wise!) and it's pretty close straight out of camera. I do shoot 4K and downsample to 1080p in Final Cut Pro. Lens is usually around 24mm.

[@johnnyorellana2534]

@@DavidBergmanPhoto Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

[@thomastuorto9929]

@@DavidBergmanPhoto I'm guessing a dslr. Audio straight from camera thru a mike or using a separate recorder?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

@@thomastuorto9929 external mic into Zoom recorder.

[@ErictheHalf_bee]

Since we're talking about flash today, are guide numbers still relevant?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Sure - especially when buying a flash. It’s a better indication of how much light output you can get as opposed to watt seconds.

[@sijilo]

🌟✌️

[@michaelpipkins9299]

Struggling with this...I'm not comprehending how a tungsten light in the 2300k range would be considered "warm" when daylight is 5600k and numbers "below" are cool, while numbers above are "warm". Why then is a bulb that is in the 2300k range now thought of as "warm"?

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

I address this in the video at 6:45 - Direct link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/epO9q5ytmM59m7s

[@sdfjsdio3443]

Terrifying mannequin, great video...

[@mixeddrinks8100]

can we clap for the clapper, the OG smart home turn on turn off light switch.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

Clap to change white balance!

[@shomanightmare]

I've never heard you talk so much.

[@DavidBergmanPhoto]

LOL Jose I guess you haven't been watching my weekly videos for the past 5 years. :)

[@shomanightmare]

@@DavidBergmanPhoto wrong!!…I have been watching and yes, there’s lots of talking. However, you outdid yourself in this one