Gelled Sunset

oshead

There was a nice sunset tonight up at the airport. I've been watching for the opportunity to do a bit of gelling with some off camera flash for some time now. Tonight finally I got the chance.

The setup was quite simple. To camera right almost straight on is a 580EX II flash mounted in a 28" square Westcott softbox. This is the one I gelled with a different colour every 10 or so shots. Each time I changed the gel I did a colour check shot using a Whibal card. Off to the right and behind Jessica just out of camera view is a 430EX with a stofen dome thing. This was not gelled and wasn't used for all shots. The camera is a 5D MkII and lenses used are 24-70mm 2.8 and 70-200mm f4 IS.

All these are straight out of the camera The only alteration was a global colour adjustment to correct Jessica's skin tone.

Here' some of the results. The full set is here on Pix.ie
.

steelydan99

The first two are excellent David, the rest look a little unnatural to me, but i must say you have a great little model there, very patient looking.

Number 2 been my favourite

steelydan99

The first two are excellent David, the rest look a little unnatural to me, but i must say you have a great little model there, very patient looking.

Number 2 been my favourite

Buceph

Could someone explain the mechanics of the light to me? I don't get how you change the colour of the sky. Surely the gelled flash needs to be reflected off something, and unless you have the most powerful flash in the world you haven't bounced it off the clouds. (And I haven't heard of any visitations or alien abductions in the past week.) Is it something to do with the softbox? None of the books I'm reading have dealt with them yet.

oshead

I put the gel on the flash and correct it in lightroom. The action of correcting it throws the sky out into another relm.

I use the Whibal grey card to do the correction.

Buceph

I knew there was some out of the box thinking magical trickery.

Thanks.

oshead

oshead wrote: »

I put the gel on the flash and correct it in lightroom. The action of correcting it throws the sky out into another relm.

Ah I see. I thought you had two flashes, one normal one for the person, and one coloured one for the sky. Didn't make sense to me either.


They are quite interesting looking. I like the first one best. Pretty clever idea, there, Oshead.

oshead

steelydan99 wrote: »

The first two are excellent David, the rest look a little unnatural to me, but i must say you have a great little model there, very patient looking.

Number 2 been my favourite

Thanks Dan. I was going for Unnatural.

Deleted User wrote: »

Ah I see. I thought you had two flashes, one normal one for the person, and one coloured one for the sky. Didn't make sense to me either.

They are quite interesting looking. I like the first one best. Pretty clever idea, there, Oshead.

I had two flashes..... I like the first best too... And not my idea...

CabanSail

So the technique is to Gell the Flash to the opposite colour which you want to shift the background?

hoganpoly

Fantastic work ,last one of set is my fav!

oshead

CabanSail wrote: »

So the technique is to Gell the Flash to the opposite colour which you want to shift the background?

That's it, and compensate back to neutral to bring the skin tones back.

Here I used a Green gel and compensated back with magenta. Though the sky was an amazing orange at the time.


Here's a link to the full size screen grab with the lightroom settings applied.

CabanSail

Quite an interesting technique. Must get some Gels and try something similar sometime.

Thanks for sharing.

Arciphel

Great shots Dave, thanks for including the Lightroom screenn grab of the before/after.

sheesh

that is so cool I can imagine it would be brilliant on fashion shoots.