DTownTV Cheap Shots — Speedlight Gels
Posted on 10 June 2010
DTownTV is a really cool, weekly TV show style podcast about photography, produced where I work at Kelby Media Group. Each week Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski teach and demonstrate cool stuff with, about, and for DSLR cameras from Nikon, Canon, and others. It’s lots of fun and it has a ton of followers. As a regular viewer myself, I stuck my head in Scott’s office last year and said, “How about I do a 1-2 minute segment on inexpensive photography solutions that you can drop into the show now and then. It can be those DIY projects and money saving photography tips and we’ll call it Cheap Shots.” Scott liked the idea and I did a bunch last year and I’m doing more this season.
One of the segments I did (in this week’s show) mentioned how to print your own colored gels for speedlights using a color laser printer and laser transparencies. (Since inkjet transparency material isn’t designed for the heat of a laser printer, it probably wouldn’t hold up very well at all with the heat of a strobe flashing repeatedly, so I don’t recommend inkjet gels). Anyway, I created a template for the gels I printed for the show, and saved it as a layered Photoshop file, then resaved it as a .zip file. That file is available here for downloading.
A couple of notes: The template I created will probably need to be color adjusted for your laser printer. See the note within the template itself for details. While the shapes I designed are intended for use with an SB 600 and other flashes will require other shapes, you might just consider printing a square of gel and use Velcro to attach it to your flash. Another cool thing to try might be to print some bright blue or bright pink, red, etc. gels and do some of the cool mood lighting like our friend Joe McNally does so successfully. Very cool stuff!!
Finally, yeah, I know gels are cheap to buy and I know laser printers are relatively expensive. This tip is NOT for everyone. On the other hand, if you have access to a color laser printer and some laser transparencies, it’s fairly easy to do. And once you make the template, you can print tons of the little suckers. And the real bonus is if you want to invent creative gels. Give that a try too. Have fun with it.
Enjoy!
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2 responses to DTownTV Cheap Shots — Speedlight Gels
There should be some standard CYMK values for the gels. Any websites?
William, I’ve never seen anything like that. I suppose there might be some kind of standardized CMYK, RGB, or Pantone reference number as a STARTING point, but the problems continue to unfold from there.
For example, NONE of those standards are designed for printing on clear media. They are all intended for printing on white stock. Additionally, I’m not sure any color calibration equipment on the market or related printer drivers can be accurately adjusted to account for printing on clear media. This is why I suggested eyeballing and tweaking coupled with comparing to a reference gel placed on a white sheet of paper.