strobist gels

[Richard]

I got my rosco strobist collection last week and have been iching for some free time to use it. Well finally I got a free moment and fired off some test shots.

I started with a rear speedlight with gel, lighting the back-wall and a front 'un-gelled' speedlight in a bounce umbrella lighting the teddy bear. The front speedlight was leaking to much light onto the background so I lost the umbrella and went barefaced, with a reflector to light the shadows on the teddy bear.

(Not the best composition in the world, I think I was in to much of a rush to see the results!)

Has anyone else tried these or got any tips on using flags to stop light spill on to the background when diffusing the key light?

[JAS_Photo]

Those are cool, Rich. I have not used colored gels yet, but was looking at a video on the Strobist site some time ago where they use a flash through a coloured glass onto a wall to give it color and texture.

My SB900 does come with gels to balance incandescent or fluorescent light with the flashes light. The gels themselves have a magnetic strip on them that the flash can read so the iTTL system know the gels are there. How cool is that?

[Richard]

That magnetic strip does sound very cool....


I almost felt jealous of you Nikon people for a split second there...

I will have to have ago at refining my technique some more over the next few weeks. I'm starting to play with manual flash rather than relying on the ETTL, that way I can see exactly what effect each light is having on the scene.