Gel Colors, Some Not As Noticeable

[Carl King]

Hi, I've be adding gels to my 500 watt Lowell Omni and using it as a background light. I notice that none of the colors I've tried putting on it are as noticeable as magenta. Green and blue are barely noticeable at all, and I've tried several different ones. I've tried it on different surfaces, wood, black curtains. Nothing shows up as easily as magenta. Is there an explanation for this, or any tips?

[Jeremy Arthur]

Are you using reflectors for you light? We usually like to use reflectors but was afraid it was too dark(first night shoot). But this is an out of frame shot of our scene with Lee filters on two 500 watt tungsten work lights. However, mine is more exaggerated lol, and the red light is supposed to be a chem light, and the blue light is just night time light. I hope this helps, I'm new so I don't know what you're looking for exactly >.<

 

 

Are you reflecting the light? This is our set without using any reflectors but I liked the result

[Matthew Kane]

Keep in mind that a tungsten lamp is naturally warmer--there's more light on the warmer end of the spectrum to make it through that warm colored gel.

 

That is, if you put a green or blue gel on your tungsten lamp, more of your light will be absorbed by the gel than if it were, say, a magenta gel (or ruby, CTO, CTS, etc). This is also why full blue gel will burn up so fast on some lights--a blue gel only allows blue light to pass through, and the rest is either reflected off the back of the gel or dissipated as heat.

 

If you must have a saturated cool colored wash, you're better off gelling an HMI, or other daylight balanced fixture. If that's not an option, you can use filter factors to predict how much light your fixture will give you when gelled. Also, *what* you are lighting matters a lot. Pointing a green colored light at a red couch makes a black couch (not to be condescending, I just thought it might have been easy to overlook).

[JD Hartman]

When you select a gel, keep in mind transmission percentage. This applies to color correction as well. Some of the "party" gels,

especially the saturated blues and reds pass far less than 50% of the light. (lumens).

[Carl King]

Thanks for the help, everyone. Makes perfect sense now.