Bonus Lesson 2: Understanding Mixed Sources As you work in commercial photography you might have a huge variety of different assignments you may be asked to do and this will require you to have a variety of equipment, plenty of , and the ability to solve many photographic problems. Your business will depend on it. The difference with location is that you now are lighting ‘scenes’ rather than just a person or an object. You will still light the person or object, but also need to light the scene around the subject and often this scene supports the subject. In some cases you may not be able to light the entire scene because it is too large and would require a significant amount of lights. This forces you to work in mixed lighting situations where the light sources within the building are a different color than your strobes.

These two images are a good example. The interior of this manufacturing plant is lit with Sodium Vapor lights which cause the ambient yellow color cast when shooting with daylight film of white balance (WB). On the right is the same shot using the Auto White Balance feature of the digital camera. So if we have AWB why the fuss over color management in lighting? Consider your strobe lights. They are daylight and wont mix with the color of the available light. This lesson is about a variety of ways to deal with these mixed light sources and when to work with them or when to ignore them and how to combine your strobe lights with the ambient light sources.

Ambient Light: Choosing TO USE it, but ignoring color shifts. There will be times when you need to see a whole area and do not have enough strobes to light the whole area or it is a situation where lighting it with strobes would not look real. Once you introduce ambient light into your photo, you risk a shift in color from that light and we will discuss that next. Here in these next few samples, we will look at using ambient light minimally so that it adds detail, but the color shift is not a problem.

This image was shot for an auto body shop that was planning a large marketing campaign. The photo as you can see was in close and tight and not much background shows. Right behind the camera are windows and these are letting in some daylight, although not a lot and it is diffused. I placed an umbrella on camera right about 2:00 and another on camera left about 8:30. One more light on the floor is adding light and a reflection under the car and preventing a black hole. The fstop was f11 @ ¼ second and you can see that the ambient did not create any color shift.

First, why do I need ambient light in this image anyway? If you guessed it was to capture to capture the sparks from the grinder you can take the rest of the day off. Sparks, fireworks, flames, and anything similar to this requires time to expose, so you have to pick a shutter speed that will do allow that. When you adjust to a longer S.S. to allow the sparks time to expose then you are allowing ambient light into your image and the result is often a color shift. In this image the window was brighter and thus was overriding the ceiling lights in brightness. So that is why there is no color shift.

In this photo I again chose to allow the ambient light into the image capture but not correct for it. I had a portable strobe with small umbrella on camera right to light them in the face. This light overpowered the ambient and I also underexposed the ambient some. The color shift appears in back and in the jewelry case, but doesn’t really affect them. They look neutral for the most part but you can see a little amber on her blouse from the display case.

Once again: If you choose to allow ambient light into your exposure and not color correct for it, you should expect a color shift in the scene. Once you add a strobe there are ways that you can minimize this shift without to much problem, but keep in mind it may not be suitable for every shoot. The way you do this is underexpose the background ambient light -1 stop and that means change the shutter speed. Let’s take this image of the couple above. You set up and take a camera meter reading and it says ¼ second @ f8. You take a picture and they are all yellow green from the ambient light shifting color-remember it is not daylight balanced. Sure you can use Auto White Balance (AWB) and problem solved, but that is not the answer here. Now you bring out the /strobe to light them quickly with one light in a Dine and Dash manner like above. You take another test and the daylight strobe light worked well and their faces look good, but the background is still pretty yellow green and so is the top of their heads. With your camera in manual mode, readjust the S.S. to 1/8 second. That is -1 stop S.S. from the pic above. Now the background ambient light has been cut in half. You take another test and you get the above shot; the people look pretty color corrected, and the background has plenty of detail even though it is underexposed -1 stop and its color shift is lessened as well.

Here is one more image where I ignored the ambient color shift. I was also a Dine and Dash one-light job. It was a construction job site and in these hallways they hand strings of regular household bulbs in this chain of lights to light the hallways. Very tungsten orange! I set up my one light on camera left and took a test. I adjusted my fstop until the exposure on him was correct. The background was dark and I increased my S.S. until I liked how much of the background showed in the picture. The background was -1.3 from what the camera meter said was a good exposure. My choice to underexpose it minimized the color shift and made him brighter which makes him stand out.

Ambient Light: Choosing TO USE IT and Correct for it. Ambient light sources could include lights that are tungsten, sodium or mercury vapor, fluorescent, and often there is a combination of more than one of these light sources at a location. They are rated in Kelvin with daylight being 5500K. Tungsten at 3200K is amber, sodium vapor are very orange/red around 2100K, and Metal Halide are closer to daylight.

In these two images, you can see where the light was off color in the top image meaning it was shot using daylight white balance settings. Then in the lower image we corrected our strobes to match the ambient and then countered the color balance on the camera. More coming up!

(3.1)Kelvin temperature color relationship: Amber warmer warm Daylight cool cooler blueish blue 3200K 3800K 4500K 5500K 6200k 6800 7500K 8000K

There are different fluorescent lights, but the most common is Cool White. It has a Kelvin temperature around 4000K, warmer than daylight, but it also produces a green cast. Fluorescents not only need a correction for the blue/red shift, but need filtration to bring the green part of the spectrum into line. For the sake of explaining color theory, this lesson will illustrate points as if you were shooting with daylight film. I’ll address digital white balance later in this lesson. We will discuss first, how to filter for ambient light before we address adding strobes to a shoot setup.

(3.2)The following is a color chart of light sources and their respective Kelvin temperature.

Artificial Light sources: Flame 1800K Sodium Vapor 2100K 40 Watt Bulb 2600K 75 Watt Bulb 2800K 100Watt Bulb 2900K 200 Watt Bulb 3000K Tungsten 3200K Mercury Vapor 3300K Photoflood Lamp 3400K Carbon Arc 5000K H.M.I. 5500K

Daylight: Sunlight, sunrise or sunset 2800-3000K Sunlight; one hour after sunrise/sunset 3200-3400K Sunlight; two hours after sunrise/before sunset 3900-4100K Direct sunlight midday 5000-5500K Overcast sky 6000-8000K

I usually do not correct for these natural outdoor color temperatures as I feel they add to the photograph. Warm sunset or sunrise light makes for a great photograph.

In these examples you can see how the color shifts when using daylight film in non-daylight light sources. The left image goes orange/red in Sodium Vapor and the other image goes very green in cool white fluorescent lights. In both cases we are illustrating ambient light only, not strobe and both would require filtration on the camera to correct the color shifts for daylight film or be adjusted in the digital White Balance (WB).

An example: Let’s say you go into an office to photograph a person. The first thing you need to do is determine what the color balance is before you even think about setting up your strobes. You do this by using a color temperature meter and I use the Minolta color meter (which unfortunately is no longer available because Sony bought Konia/Minolta). Once you have determined where you will be photographing and know that you will be mixing your daylight strobes with ambient, you take a color meter reading to determine what you will be dealing with. If your reading is 4000K, that tells you that the light is warmer than daylight, remember that Tungsten is amber and rated 3200K, so 4000k is on the way to becoming Tungsten. If you took a picture now it would have a slight amber cast.

The color wheel is universal in its meaning and works here just as easily. If your ambient light is green you put a magenta filter, the opposite of green, on your lens to eliminate the green shift. This principal works the same no matter the color.

Some of the information presented next is for film cameras. Digital is a different approach and will be explained shortly.

Color Correction (CC) Filters To eliminate the color cast, you need to add filtration to your camera lens to offset the warm color shift. I have a complete set of all Kodak Wratten Color Correction filters, aka CC filters. They come in blue, amber, green and magenta and are no small investment. The following chart (3.3) shows the relationship between the Blue and Amber CC filters and the color wheel opposites. Blue 80A is the opposite of Amber 85, they cancel each other out. An 82B is the opposite of 81B. So if you are trying to filter out blue light in a scene you add Amber to the lens and vice versa.

A sample of color correction (CC) filters from Kodak.

(3.3)Color Correction (CC) Filters: Blue 80A Amber 85 80B 85C Bluish 80C Warm 81EF 80D 81D 82C 81C 82B 81B Pale 82A Pale 81A Blue 82 Amber 81

In addition to the blue/amber CC filters, you will use Magenta filtration for correcting fluorescent light and they come in increments of .05 .10 .20 .30 .40 and .50. The most common filters used are the .30 and .40 and occasionally the .10. I do not own the .50 as I have never needed it. The color meter will tell you which filter to place in front of the lens to eliminate the color cast and you may often be required to use a combination of several different filters because your scene may have a little daylight and fluorescent mixed together. You should also try to limit the number of CC filters that you put onto the lens as the various surfaces will affect the quality of your images definition and contrast.

How to use a color meter

You first turn on the meter and check to make sure that the meter is set to the Color balance (film or digital white balance) you are using. Here the meter is set for Daylight.

You next push the side button to take a reading of the ambient light color temperature where your subject will be. Here the display reads 4000K.

You next push the LB Button (Light Balance). It reads -67.

Turn the meter over and under LB chart look for the closest to -67. -56 is closer to -67 than -81 is, so you will see next to -56 that it calls for an 80C Filter. This is the first filter that goes on your lens. Its blue and it is canceling out the amber color shift

Turn the meter back over and push the CC (Color Correction) button. It reads -3.

Turn the meter back over again and find the –CC chart where is shows -3 to be between -2 and -4. I will choose -2 and place a .05 Green gel on the lens next to the 80C. This should give a perfect color balance where the meter reading was originally taken. (LLBO116)

No light source is ever color perfect and even though they basically are in the blue/amber range, there is often green mixed in as well. I photograph on assignment, locations that always have mixed light surprises such as tungsten light with a fluorescent fixture right next to it.

In the before mentioned office, the meter read 4000K and if you just use the basic Kelvin chart and add the recommended 80C (blue) filter, that will cancel the amber. But you shoot your photo and later find a green cast. That is because you missed filtering for the green. This again points to the importance of a color meters precision readings. Once you have taken a reading and added the filter(s) to the lens, shoot the photograph on daylight film, you should have neutral color balance in your photo with no color shift if the mixed lighting throughout your scene is the same Kelvin Temperature.

Lighting Gels Now you introduce your strobe lights into the mix and are presented with your next challenge. You have taken a color meter reading and added the appropriate filters to your lens (lets say blue 80C and .05 magenta) and you have neutralized any ambient color shift. Your strobes are balanced to daylight, so if you move them in and take your shot, they are assuming the color of the CC filter on front of your lens. It is like shining them through a small blue/green filter. So you must add filtration to your strobes to make them the same color as the ambient light, or the opposite of the filters on your lens. This is where you use Lee or Rosco color correction lighting gels to change the color of your lights.

Here is the key point to understand: You read the ambient lights color, with the color meter, and then add lighting gels to the strobes so they are the same color as the ambient light. Then you add filtration to the lens (or WB) to counter that color shift of the ambient/strobe so you have perfect color balance on your daylight film.

THERE ARE NO STROBES USED IN THESE NEXT 3 PHOTOS. This photo shows the color shift of daylight balanced film/camera shot at 5500K in a color temperature of 4800K Fluorescent. Notice it has a yellow/green cast. F/8 @ ½ second.

This next photo shows the same photo with a White Balance (WB) setting for Fluorescent which I selected from the cameras custom WB settings. It is pretty accurate, but still has a hint of Yellow/Green. F/8 @ ½ second.

Here, I set the camera up to take a custom white balance reading by reading off the white card in the foreground. The image is slightly blurry. The color balance is almost perfect and certainly close enough for most applications. F/8 @ ½ second.

This photo is an example putting color correction gels on the strobe. The products are neutral while the back wall, which received no strobe light and only ambient fluorescents, still has a slight green shift to it. I also shot this F/8 @ 1/4 second to underexpose the ambient -1 stop. This allowed the products, lit by strobe to not be interrupted by the ambient as much.

This chart shows the lighting gels color and number. If you want to convert your strobe to Cool White Fluorescent you would place a 3304 Green over your light and if you want to make it tungsten light at 3200K, you add Amber 3407 to your light.

(3.4) Lighting Gels Color Lighting Gel______Converts______Blue 3202 Tungsten to Daylight Blue 3204 ½ Blue Blue 3206 ¼ Blue Blue 3208 1/8 Blue Green 3304 Daylight to Cool White Fluorescent Green 3315 about half or above Amber 3401/3407 Full CTO, Daylight to Tungsten Amber 3408 ½ CTO Amber 3409 ¼ CTO Amber 3410 1/8 CTO

The relationship of color wheel opposites works here as well. A blue 3202 is the opposite of Amber 3407 and Blue 3208 is the opposite of 3410, they cancel each other out. NOTE: 3401 and 3407 are virtually the same. They both convert daylight to tungsten. 3401 convert to 3200K while 3407 converts to 2900K.

This was a very challenging location for this image. The ambient light was tungsten in the background from the and the left side was all large windows with daylight pouring through. I took my color reading from way back behind the woman in red and also on the left by the large vase. I then averaged these Kelvin readings to come up with a compromise Kelvin temperature. I next placed the lighting gels on my lights to make them match the ambient light, and then countered with the opposite CC filters on the lens. I placed two large soft white umbrellas to camera right and pointed at the group, two large umbrellas on camera left and equal with the gentleman on the left, and a couple raw heads along the windows and pointed up at the ceiling to brighten it up. I used a shutter speed that was -1 for the ambient and this allowed the strobes to be the key while the ambient was the fill light. I have worked in mixed lighting for 25 years and have a good feel of how I want the outcome for color to be. I like warm scenes and I purposely chose to have this image stay warm than neutral whites. (LLBO122, LLBO123)

For this executive portrait, the chosen location was the lobby of the bank he was president of. The mixed light was tungsten ceiling spots and a daylight balanced skylight in the roof. When I metered for the color, there was warm shift towards tungsten up front. As I moved towards the center of the lobby, the color meter read closer to daylight as I approached the skylight. In this case I split the difference between the warmer and cooler readings. The foreground was 3800K, tungsten with a hint of daylight. The skylight area in back was cooler at 5000K, daylight slightly influenced by the tungsten ceiling spots. I chose to color correct in the middle around 4500K. I placed Rosco gels on my lights to make them 4500K and a CC80D Blue on the lens to counter the 4500K. I did not go all the way towards tungsten or all the way to daylight. You can tell by the warm amber area of the signage on left and the blueish on the wall above him. What this illustrates is by choosing to go half way between the two readings at 4500k; I have not eliminated all the warm light or all the cool light. I also placed a large lightbox to the left and at head height to light him and a small white umbrella for fill. In the background I used two strobes pointed up at the ceiling to bounce light off the ceiling for a fill on the background. All lights were gelled and filtration was added to the camera lens.

CC Filter and Lighting Gel Comparison This next chart indicates which filter to put on your lens when using daylight film and also tells you which gel to put on your light. The gel on your light is opposite color of the filter you put on your camera. These recommendations are fairly accurate, but if you need precise color, you should always test. You will notice that in the 80 and 82 series CC filters, the gels recommended for your light include both an Amber and Blue gel. The reason is that the amber gels are more amber than needed, so by combining a weaker blue with the stronger amber, you are weakening the ambers Kelvin temperature slightly to be more precise with the CC filter.

(3.5) Ambient Put This Put this Color Temperature filter on your lens gel on your light______3200K 80A Blue 3407 (Full Amber) 3500K 80B Blue 3407 (Full Amber) + 3208 (Blue) 3800K 80C Blue 3407 (Full Amber) + ½ 3208 4100K 80D Blue 3408 (1/2 Amber) + 3206 (Blue) 4400K 82C Blue 3409 (1/4 Amber) + 3206 (Blue) 4700K 82B Blue 3410 (1/8 Amber) 5000K 82A Blue 3409 (1/4 Amber) + 3206 (Blue) 5500K None 5800K 81 Amber 6100K 81A Amber 3208 (1/8 Blue) 6400K 81B Amber 3208 (1/8 Blue) 6700K 81C Amber 3206 (1/4 Blue) 7100K 81D Amber 3206 (1/4 Blue) 7500K 81EF Amber 3204 (1/2 Blue) 8000K 81EF Amber 3204 (1/2 Blue) 9000-10,000K 85C Very Amber 3202 (Full Blue) 14,000 + 85 Very Amber 3202 (Full Blue)

The above chart is an example from testing I have done. You should test this yourself for color accuracy.

If I am asked to shoot a precision photograph at a location where light is really mixed and color is critical, I will go in before the photo session and shoot a color test roll of film. I’ll go in with my color meter and take a reading and shoot a test at the color temperature and with appropriate filtration. I process and view the film and determine if the results are satisfactory. If you do not have a color temperature meter, then you can use chart 3.5 and definitely go shoot a test and adjust filtration accordingly.

In this example of a restaurant, the ambient light was the large glass windows. The color temperature was 6200K as the glass changed the light blueish. We placed Rosco 3208 lighting gel on the strobe lights to make them 6200K and match the ambient light. Next I added a CC 81A amber filter to the lens to eliminate the blue cast entirely. Two large umbrellas were placed on the left to light the scene evenly. One of our problems was the angle of incidence created a hot spot in the glass from the farthest umbrella. To eliminate the reflection we moved the umbrellas closer to the camera and the hot spot is just out of the frame on the right side.

Digital We have discussed in depth the theory and concepts around filtering ambient and how to balance your strobes with it. Digital however makes it all substantially easier and occasionally more difficult. In essence, we will start over by looking at the steps required for mixing ambient and strobes with digital cameras. I have found my digital cameras to actually be quite forgiving in respect to color shifts. When I think the background should really shift, it doesn’t shift much. However, this is little consolation if precise color is needed. If you are shooting a home interior for an architect and there is mixed light, you cannot have blue light on the white wall and amber light on the other side with green fluorescent in the kitchen.

Unlike shooting film, where your film camera cannot adjust for different Kelvin temperatures, digital cameras can by using manual white balance. (Check your camera. Some of the more amateur digital SLR’s do not have this ability.) You can set the camera at a variety of different Kelvin temperatures to adjust for the ambient light color shift. Even though I am shooting digitally, I still go into a photo session with my Minolta color meter and take a reading because it is extremely accurate. I then set the cameras white balance to the Kelvin temperature the meter indicated. The nice part is that I do not have to put CC filters on my cameras lens because I am adjusting for the color shift by changing the Kelvin temperature in white balance settings. I just have to put light gels on the lights to make them the same as the ambient light.

Using Your Camera as a Color Meter You can use your camera as a color meter, but it is only a visual test and is not near as accurate as a color meter. You first take a series of test shots with your camera set on manual white balance. If you believe that the ambient light is close to Tungsten, then set you WB to 3000K and take a test shot, then reset it for 3500K and take another. Take another test shot at 4000K, 4500k, 5000K, 5500K, and so on until you have a series of bracketed WB shots. Now visually look at the images on the LCD and try to look for the image with the truest color balance. Some will clearly look off color and some will have more neutral color. Delete the ones that are clearly off color, take a break and go back and look at the remaining test shots. Try to narrow down the remaining tests to the image that appears to be the most neutral. If it is 4500K, then set your cameras WB to 4500K and gel your lights with the appropriate light gels (next) and you are ready to get down to business. Any color shifts should be correctable in Photoshop. Now using chart 3.6, determine the filtration to add to your lights to match the Kelvin setting on the camera. You do your photo shoot and then can make small color adjustments on the computer to the color shift if there is one.

(3.6) Ambient Set your Put these Color Temperature WB to this gels on your lights______3200K 3200K 3407 (Full Amber) 3500K 3500K 3407 (Full Amber) + 3208 (Blue) 3800K 3800K 3407 (Full Amber) + ½ 3208 4100K 4100K 3408 (1/2 Amber) + 3206 (Blue) 4400K 4400K 3409 (1/4 Amber) + 3206 (Blue) 4700K 4700K 3410 (1/8 Amber) 5000K 5000K 3409 (1/4 Amber) + 3206 (Blue) 5500K None 5800K 5800K Not enough shift to bother 6100K 6100K 3208 (1/8 Blue) 6400K 6400K 3208 (1/8 Blue) 6700K 6700K 3206 (1/4 Blue) 7100K 7100K 3206 (1/4 Blue) 7500K 7500K 3204 (1/2 Blue) 8000K 8000K 3204 (1/2 Blue) 9000-10,000K Way up there 3202 (Full Blue) 14,000 + Way up there 3202 (Full Blue)

This image has the digital camera WB set at 5500K while Color Meter says ambient is 4800K and the strobe on the product is not gelled. You can see that the right side is neutral from the daylight strobe but the left side is greenish as the strobe falls off and gives way to the ambient color.

Camera WB is a custom WB reading with the strobe (no light gels). Still has a slight green shift from the ambient.

Here I used AWB Auto White Balance with the strobe (no gels on light) and it is slightly better correction than the custom WB.

Here I made a Custom White Balance reading with the gels on the strobe to make them the same as the ambient and the color is pretty neutral. I would go with this reading and light setup. I have done some extensive testing with my digital setup and found it to be fairly accurate but still never perfect. You too must do some testing to figure out how your camera and lights will respond in these situations. In summary, I would say that gelling your lights to match the ambient and doing a CWB reading will give you the best color balance.

Color Management in the Real World of Commercial Photography Ok, you are sitting there thinking the heck with all this techno mumbo jumbo, I will correct in Raw Converter (ACR). Well can you? Yes and no! If the color shift for your entire scene is the same, then yes you can correct in ACR using the temperature slider. That is called a global adjustment. But, if your scene has windows with daylight coming in and a fluorescent fixture spilling green all over and a tungsten light in the back, then these ACR global corrections won’t do the job. OK, OK, OK, suuurrrre………you can make selections and change color in each of these areas that are off color, but this can be very difficult and time consuming. TIME IS MONEY! Besides, think about this: when you pour a can of blue paint into a can of red paint, where it mixes the color begins to change to magenta. In the middle it will be blue and the outer edges of the can will still be red, but where it mixes will begin to be magenta. The same theory works with light. If you have amber tungsten light in one room and green fluorescent in another room, there will be another color where those two colors transition. Why not just gel the lights and everything is balanced and the same, then you can fine tune with a global correction in ACR?

Let’s get back to the camera as color meter. As I write this I know of no camera that has a built in color meter or takes a picture and tells you on the LCD what the color temperature is. This will probably change and “yahoo” when it does. So here is the strategy for determining the color temperature with digital: set up the shot with camera in place and take a test in RAW. If you are linked to the laptop then it should pop up on the screen and be on your hard drive. I use Canon and neither the Zoom browser nor the EOS viewer software tells you what the color temp of an image is. So you have PS open and ready and open up the RAW test image. The ACR will tell you what the temp of the image is in the Temperature slider at the top of the adjustment sliders. Once you have taken the test, looked at the RAW image and determined the color temp, use chart 3.6 to determine what gel needs to go on each strobe to make them the same color as the ambient light. Then set up your lights as needed, adjust your manual WB to the image open, shoot one more test RAW file, open in ACR and preview. Does it all look balanced color wise?

Now what do you do when you have a situation where you have the green fluorescent kitchen light, tungsten living room with a daylight window over on one side? If you have a color meter you would read the window area and set you camera WB to that. The reason is you cannot gel the window light like you can your strobes. Let’s say the color meter said 6000K at the window. Now gel your lights to be 6000K including the ones that will light the kitchen and the living room. Usually this works well if you now move all these 6000k gelled lights into each room, but can be a problem sometimes. Here again, are you allowing any of the ambient light into the scene?

Here are some examples of where the images could not be corrected with one global adjustment in ACR. Next to the camera are tungsten chandeliers. After reading the color temperature of the ambient light I weighed the color temperature towards the tungsten light and set my WB to 3500K and gelled the strobes as well to match. The first image is the result-way to amber. This was not the best analysis of the light temperature. First the color of the wall above the sink was not as green as it should be, such as indicated in the second image which is weighed towards the fluorescent color. The metal fridge is very amber also. In image 2 the green coming from the fluorescent changed the color of the cabinets from a Honey color to a green tinted blonde.

Thank goodness Photoshop is my friend. I went in and created global color adjustments as close as I could and then made selections to the fridge to get it looking neutral and added warmth back into the cabinets. The process is to time consuming to explain it fully here, but you should have a goal of mastering PS as well. The real point however, is to get it right in the first place. This PS work required a lot of time and I was not paid for it. Why? Because, I can light it correctly and because I failed to do it perfectly, the client shouldn’t pay for it.

One last thought: if this assignment would have been for Miller Paint, it would be a disaster from the mixed color shifts. I would also weight my color temperature readings towards the fluorescent instead and gel the lights on the front of the chairs towards those readings.

Color shift for creativity. When on assignment, I do a critical analysis of ambient color temperature and often choose to not totally correct or only partially correct for color shifts in ambient temperature. This lets the scene shift in color and often provides a pleasing effect. If I am photographing a person, I usually want them color corrected, but will let the background shift in color. As long as the person is not affected by the ambient light they won’t have a color shift.

This image was taken for a fashion catalog. We were in a log lodge shooting and the warm ambient light gave us the atmosphere we were seeking. To photograph her reading, we wanted to leave the lamp (3200K) on for its warm feel. The first thing I did before setting up strobes, was shoot several Polaroid tests to find an exposure where the lamp was not blown out, yet looked like it was lighting her. These tests gave me an exposure that resulted in a perfect lamp, but the subject was really dark and that was what I wanted. Next, I moved in close, a large light box as key on the left and pointed it towards her feet. This kept some of the light off the wall where the lamp is, but lit her nicely. I next moved in a large soft white umbrella on camera right, set at -1 from the key light and it acted as a soft fill light. I also added an 81C amber filter on the lens to warm the whole scene up. I did not put lighting gels on the strobe this time because I wasn’t trying to eliminate a color shift, but rather use it. So the lamp had a warm effect and the 81C on camera in essence shifted the strobes to a warmer feel. (LLBO135, LLBO136) Shock Assessment Now that you are totally bewildered and stunned at the complexity of color management in lighting, take a deep breath and relax. How long until you are confronted with this type of a situation? Do you understand the theories presented here? Take your time and read this over many times if necessary until it makes better sense. Then go challenge yourself by practicing, because it makes perfect. Once this has sunk in, it will make perfect sense just like all the other aspects in photography that at one time, also were bewildering.

Go to www.rosco.com to find a dealer for these gels.