I have to shoot some interiors and I don't have small tungsten lights anymore. So the easiest response (in terms of my equipment and the agency's budget) is to throw some CTO gels over my strobes and use them for discrete fill lighting.

But this seems so obvious that I suspect I am missing something.

Has anyone had experience doing this?

Thanks,

Bill Jackson
Motown

The tests I did a long time ago with Fuji 64T, there was some weird reciprocity factor (color) from the short strobe burst. May not be an issue with digital capture. Or you could just use the modeling lights and actually get to "see" your lighting.

You loose some light output from the filters but other than that that's what they are made for.

Set you white balance to custom and balance just before you shoot. Shoot raw and you should have a good starting point when you open them up.

Bill,

I have some fiberglass, focus beam, Ianiro Red Heads if you want to borrow/rent/buy them. You would need to drive out to Ann Arbor though.

They are all 1000 watt, you could use lower watt tubes. I have up to 7 (some are still new in box.)

Same as these from Harry's in Canada:

http://harrysproshop.com/Ianiro/ianiro.html

quote:

Originally posted by piktour:
Set your white balance to custom and balance just before you shoot.

There is an interesting post on Luminous Landscape on the new Adobe Lightroom 2.0 features. Including custom profiles for tungsten & daylight using a Macbeth Color Checker.

Might be worthwhile if an upgrade is in your plans.

Thanks for the good advice. Unless I rent hot lights, I will go with the gel solution and use my color meter to calibrate the fill to the ambient lighting.

Interestingly, I just realized that strobe-to-tungsten gels come in two flavors: CTO (more reddish) and Straw (more yellowish) according to the Rosco sample pack. So I'll have to test which alternative suits the mood.

(As it happens I have been using gels and color meters for five days of shooting art with 4 x 5 transparency. You can't believe how anxious I am to return to digital after the "majestic grace" of large format. Labs that used to give two-hour turnaround now run to three-hours, or twenty-hours if you don't make the daily cut-off. It's like going back in time.)

I upgraded to DXO 5 for OSX.

It has a color meter that allows you to check color balance on several parts of an image. You can then re-balance those sections and have DXO process the images with your corrections.

The program also allows you to correct perspective and exposure and all the rest.

If you have a lot of images such as a real estate job and you have the juice to learn DXO you will find it a fantastic addition to you workflow.

Terry

Just to add, if you use just the modeling lights you might need to use 1/4 or 1/2 CTB's instead of CTO's, because tungsten/halogen get warmer if you dim them down. I've done this with good success.

In my experience, straw gels are a better match for halogen lights while CTO's are a better match for incandescent, which are a bit redder and less yellow.

If you are just using modeling lights, why would you need CTO?

CTO (or straw) for strobes to match installed lighting, CTB to cool down dimmed modeling lights.

Ah, I misread.

But be prepared for the filter factor of CTB's. A full CTB has much more opacity (less transmission) than a CTO. Likewise for 1/4 and 1/2's.

www.rosco.com/includes/technotes/filters/filterfacts_06.pdf

Something I have noticed is that you dont always need full filtration. Have plenty on hand 3/4,1/2,1/4. Use the dimmer on the models to warm it up. Also remember to bring cinefoil and ND.