Convenient and inexpensive colored flash gels

Do you want me to tell you about my favorite col­ored flash gels? About Selens SE-CG20 Gel Fil­ter Set?

Col­or gels are most com­mon­ly used to change the col­or tem­per­a­ture of light sources. And also to give the right shade of light for an artis­tic effect.

Most pho­tog­ra­phers and ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers are accus­tomed to using these inex­pen­sive col­or gel kits:

They are attached to flash­lights with the help of such a “device”:

Those. Vel­cro strip is glued to the flash (Tex­tile Vel­cro clo­sure), this “device” clings to it, and one or more fil­ters from the set are already installed in it.

These sets are wide­ly used due to their low price, and if you order them on AliEx­press, and even with the use of cash­back ser­vices, then the price of these sets will be very low. And so when I lost a sim­i­lar set last year, I did­n’t real­ly regret it.

And last year, while search­ing on AliEx­press, I found a slight­ly dif­fer­ent set, here is a link to it, well, or you can use the search on AliEx­press and you might be able to find a price even low­er. (for those who pre­fer Ebay: they are also there, here are the links, one, sec­ond and third, well, or again, you can use the search on Ebay). This kit is also sold as Selens SE-CG20 (both on AliEx­press and Ebay).

What is good about this set? This is how it looks like:

As you can see, the entire set con­sists of a pair of wide rub­ber bands and 20 of the most com­mon­ly used col­ors to cre­ate dif­fer­ent col­or effects:

Five con­ver­sions:

• 1/2 CTB (3200K-4300K)
• Full CTO (6500K 3200K)
• 1/2 CTO (6500K 3800K)
• 1/4 CTO (6500K 4600K)
• Plus Green (cc30 green)

One dif­fuse gel:

• Heavy Frost Dif­fu­sion

and 14 col­or fil­ters:

red-yel­low shade:

• Choco­late
• Smokey Pink
• Fol­lies Pink
• Bright Red
• Rust
• Dark Salmon
• Okla­homa Yel­low
• Medi­um Yelow

Blue-green shade:

• deep pur­ple
• Spe­cial KH Laven­der
• Just Blue
• Medi­um Blue Green
• steel green
• moss green

How, then, are col­ored gels attached to the flash? And every­thing is so sim­ple and banal that it is per­haps bet­ter to show.

Let’s take Shan­ny SN910+ flash (aka Shan­ny SN600SN)

We will put one of the com­plete rub­ber bands on it.

And attach the col­ored gel to the flash.

As you can see in the pho­to, col­ored flash gels com­plete­ly cov­er the glass of the flash head, and the size of this glass in Shan­ny SN910+ is not at all small. After all, the size of these fil­ters is 60x150mm, and the size of the “work­ing area” is 60x70mm, which is enough for on-cam­era flash­es (Pow­er­ful ham­mer flash­es Luch-M1 or Metz meca­blitz 76 MZ‑5 is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent field of berries)

Sim­i­lar­ly, you can put a col­ored gel on a flash with a small­er glass on the flash head, for exam­ple, on the Yongn­uo YN-560III

So no need to stick any­thing to the flash, and if today you need to use col­ored gels on one flash, and tomor­row it becomes nec­es­sary to apply them on anoth­er, there are no prob­lems, you don’t have to think about how to attach them, you don’t need to re-stick any­thing or look for Vel­cro in shops and stalls. In addi­tion, there are addi­tion­al bonus­es: the appear­ance does not suf­fer and the trade dress of your flash units is not lost.

And tak­ing into account the fact that there are two such rub­ber bands in the kit, you can use them on two flash­es at once, or even in gen­er­al, use the same ones instead of com­plete rub­ber bands.rub­ber bands for mon­ey”, which can be pur­chased at almost any sta­tionery store.

Well, of course, this the sto­ry will not be com­plete if you do not show the col­ored flash gels at work. Let’s take the Xiao­mi MI NDY-02-AD 10400mAh pow­er bank, it is in an alu­minum case, and there­fore looks gray and incon­spic­u­ous in the pho­to:

and put two flash­es with blue gel on the left, one will be direct­ed to the back­ground, the oth­er will be turned to illu­mi­nate the end of the pow­er bank, and the third flash with orange gel will be direct­ed to the pow­er bank. And here’s what we get:

Well, or one more exam­ple of using col­ored gels for flash. The his­to­ry of this pho­to is banal: last year, on the eve of Hal­loween, friends from the Kharkov quest room “The­DO­OR” asked for a pair of my flash­es with racks and soft­box­es for rent, because. they pre­pared a themed pho­to cor­ner and want­ed to take good pho­tos of their vis­i­tors in it, but at that time they had not yet man­aged to pur­chase their equip­ment. Of course, among the oth­er entourage of the pho­to cor­ner there were also Hal­loween pump­kins. And although I didn’t have a cam­era with me, I just couldn’t get past a Hal­loween pump­kin in a hat and on hay and using some­one else’s cam­era took this shot

If any­one is inter­est­ed in the tech­ni­cal details of the pic­ture, then they are under the spoil­er

Stand­ing on the left in a soft­box is a YN650IIV with Just Blue gels and 1/2 CTB (3200K 4300K), and inside the gourd is a YN560III with Bright Red and Rust gels, addi­tion­al­ly, for a warmer glow inside the gourd, the white bal­ance on the cam­era was set to 3130k. “Intra-cham­ber” jpg, only resize from pro­cess­ing.

But I think it’s worth remem­ber­ing that flash gels are noth­ing more than a tool, they can be used for a wide range of pur­pos­es. But like any oth­er tool, the use of pho­to flash gels must be used wise­ly and skill­ful­ly, as a tool for real­iz­ing a cre­ative idea, and not as a sub­sti­tute for it.