SB-800 and gels

[ilockert]

Im going to be doing a lot of night shooting this week under the yellowish colored street lights should i use one of the gels or just go with the normal flash and defusier? Just an idea of what ill be shooting old cars doing burnout on a main road, Its Crusin the coast this week which is always a good time of year. and input would be great. Thanks

 

[Garbz]

The street lights are mercury vapour aren't they? The CTO gel on your flash would give it a slightly different colour still to the lights but it depends entirely what you are going for.

There's no rule saying that you need to properly colour compensate for your lighting. I have seen perfect examples of when doing the opposite yields awesome results such as putting the CTO gel on during daylight making the sun and everything it illuminate bright blue.

If you're shooting cars at night you will have a problem though. Cars are very reflective and don't tend to show up too well when you flash them with a tiny camera flash. But by all means try it and see if you can come up with something.

 

[ilockert]

yea, im going to do some practice shots tomorrow night with my car and just see what the outcome is.

 

[fmw]

If the shot needs flash, you use flash, and flash produces a proper exposure, then that will blow out most any ambient lighting. You can ignore it.

 

[Garbz]

Until you drag the shutter

 

[Mike_E]

If you are talking about the sodium lights then the color you see is all they put out.

I would just take a tripod and shoot. If you have a camera that can auto bracket or a remote shutter button shoot in bursts of three to better your chance of a shot with acceptable motion blur.

The flash un-gelled is the better idea for people shots.

 

[amandajw]

No gells for the sodium lights? Supposivly the lights are sodium where were shotting part of our film but they look pinkish...
It tints the light of those and I wanted the pink glow though... I'm not that great in cinematography and were beginning film students so I was wondering if you had any suggestions. Also, I'm not normally the one filming but the people who are havn't filmed before hardly and so are motion camers significantly different than stills?
Any suggestions on night shooting, or silhouettes against the sky (the time right past sunset when theirs hardly any light)...it's hard to use much lighting or it ruins the effect.

 

[Helen B]

Amanda,

For shooting movies at night I almost always use incandescent/tungsten colour balance whether I am shooting film or video. This makes the sodium vapour lights look golden and car headlights etc look white.

If I were to use artificial light I would usually balance it to tungsten (ie 3200 K). That would mean putting a 'full CTO' gel over a daylight source such as a flash (for stills) or an HMI (for movies).

Best,
Helen

 

[Garbz]

Ahhh sodium that's the one. Not sure where I got mercury vapour from, because now that I think about it they are expensive.

I'm sure there are CTO gels suited to sodium lights, but the CTOs which come with the SB-800 are Tungsten +1