Photography News issue 23

Photography News Issue 23 absolutephoto.com

Technique

strength of the gel it was obvious that a little more colour work would be required. For that reason, although you could shoot this technique in JPEG mode, it’s good to have the safety net that comes from shooting in Raw. Practically, all you need is a further shift of the Temperature andTint sliderswhenprocessing your file, but you can also experiment with stronger or less intense CTO filters to perfect the look in-camera. Building up the lighting Once the combination of filters and white- balance is working you can get more experimental with the lighting. For instance we positioned a second Safari 2 flash at 90º to Amber’s right in order to add a highlight, and tried this light with both a CTO gel and just the naked flash. Fitted with a standard reflector dish as before, the gelled version gave an improved, more three-dimensional look to Amber’s figure, allowing more separation from the background. This worked even better when turned to a slightly higher power than the first light, giving a kicker-light look. Trying the second light without the CTO gel gave an interesting split to the colours on Amber. The unmodified flash is around 5500K in colour temperature, not far off the ambient light in the background, so it was therefore a lot cooler looking than the rest of the light on her when recorded with the camera’s lowered white-balance, and looked a bit like a cool-toned spotlight on stage.

The kit we used

As we were shooting on location we used Lencarta’s Safari 2 flash

system, which not only allows you a lot of power and extended shooting time (the 600Ws flash generators can manage up to 400 shots between charges at full power, and this runs into 1000s when used lower), but also a surprising level of toughness. We were caught in several heavy showers on the shoot and although the Safari 2 system isn’t actually waterproof we managed to keep on shooting. Care was taken to protect the heads and the tops of the generators using plastic bags, but because the battery is sealed, it’s safe to stand in wet conditions (so long as the water doesn’t reach the charging point, which is 10cm from the base). When it comes to buying your own Colour Temperature Orange gels, pro versions are inexpensive and take some of the guesswork out of the technique. Gels can be bought in varying strengths, much like you would get with ND filters, but in this case it’s the temperature of the light which is incrementally changed. Typically gels are sold in single sheets or in long rolls and are usually available from ⅛ through to full, so while a ⅛ CTO filter might only alter the temperature of the flash by a few hundred degrees, from 5500K to 4900K, for instance, a Full CTO gel would take the flash’s 5500K to close to the tungsten white-balance setting (around 3000K). If you’re looking to buy, a sheet of Rosco E-Colour+ 204 Full CTO gel would set you back around £6 from stagedepot.co.uk. For more lighting advice and information about Lencarta flash and continuous light equipment please visit lencarta.com.

This page Using a second flash allows a choice as to whether further gels should be used to balance the colour (below right) or not (below left), which gives a cooler contrast.

Above In this setup, the warm and cool lighting is down to modifying only one of the flashes with a Colour Temperature Orange (CTO) gel. With the camera’s white-balance set to 2500K the available light looks cooler, and so would Amber were it not for the CTO filter on the main light. The second light, at the side, has no CTO filter, and because the temperature of the flash is close to daylight its colour looks cooler, too.

1 / 2 CTO

1 / 8 CTO

Full CTO

About colour temperature

Whether the light you’re using is the sun or a lamp, colour temperature is a description of how warm or cool the illumination is. The human eye is pretty good at adapting to different light temperatures, making everything look ‘normal’, but digital cameras need some help and that’s where the white-balance (WB) comes in; a camera’s method of interpreting the colour. So, in theory, if you set the correct white-balance, anything white in the image will look perfectly neutral whether the light hitting it is warm or cool. Colour temperature is measured in Kelvin (K), and the only confusing part is that lower temperatures mean the light is warmer looking (a household tungsten bulb might be around 3000K), and higher temperatures means that the light is cooler looking (overcast daylight might be as high as 8000K). In this technique, we deliberately set the white-balance incorrectly, so that the natural light appears much too cool and the light of the flash, fitted with an orange filter, looks normal.

Thanks to This month’s model was Amber Tutton, amber-tutton.co.uk. Find out more about Lencarta lighting kit at lencarta.com, where there is also a blog with detailed lighting tutorials and practical advice on getting the most from your lights in different situations.