Gellin' like Magellan

I've had a number of people over the past few weeks ask me about gelling speedlight flashes, and how I do it.  What gels do I carry around?  How do I attach them to my speedlights?  Are there any technical issues I need to think about? and so on.

Then today a thread was started on the Strobist Flickr group regarding the storage and organisation of gels and attaching them to the flash, so I was going to fire off a couple of pics.  Well, I ended up shooting more than a couple, and decided to finally write a bit of a blog post about it.

I will use the terms "gel" and "filter" interchangeably throughout this post, but please note that when I say "filter", I'm talking about gels for your flashes, not those that you screw onto the end of your lens. :)

So, to start with, I use Nikon SB-900, SB-600 and Yongnuo YN460-II flashes.  The SB-900 comes with its own gel holder, and a small selection of common gels which work well if you  happen to need exactly those gels, but sometimes you don't (although there is the Nikon SJ-3 filter kit available for the SB-900 to give you a little more variety).

In the image above, you can see the three models of flashes mentioned, as well as my "gel folder".  It's actually a business card holder, but it works perfectly.  In the front of the folder is a pouch containing my four Lumiquest FXtra gel holders.  Beyond that are pages of gels, ordered in different strengths, grouped according to colour.

On the first page of gels, you can see double CTO at the top, then full CTO, then 1/2 CTO and 1/4 CTO.  The slip with information from the Rosco swatchbook is contained in the same pocket, and each gel has an address label attached to the end for quick and easy organisation when packing things away.

Above you can see a selection of CTO, CTB and Neutral Density filters that I pop over the flashes. Why neutral density filters? Well, sometimes, lowest power just isn't low enough, especially if you're working in close quarters with really tiny subjects.

To attach these gels to my flash, as mentioned, I use the Lumiquest FXtra gel holders. They can seem a little pricey, but I believe they are definitely worth it. It makes adding, removing or switching gels an absolute breeze, and using the cinch straps, there's no bits of velcro glued to your flashes and no sticky residue to deal with when they fall off.

Here are the Nikon SB-600, SB-900 and Yongnuo YN460-II flashes with the Lumiquest FXtra gel holders attached. The image on the left shows the coverage over the front of the flash, and the image on the right shows the potential for light leakage on the sides.

As you can see, the FXtra's opening completely covers the flash head of both the SB-600 and the YN460-II when viewed from the front, which makes them idea for flashes with a head this size.  It is a little tight on the SB-900, and the gel holder itself doesn't cover the full width of the flash, but not enough that it's ever bothered me.  You can see on the image on the right, that the YN460-II gets the closest to the flash head for less leakage potential, although its head is fixed at 35mm, whereas the SB-600 and SB-900 can zoom their head for longer reach and less risk of spill.

Again, light spill out the sides from these has never really bothered me, and I can't really say it's affected my images, however thoes gaps at the side can easily be covered by a bit of black gaffer tape.

A couple of things to note when using it with an SB-900.  Firstly, as mentioned, the FXtra doesn't cover the full width of the SB-900 flash head.  This, in and of itself, is not a huge problem, as the gels are wide enough to cover the entire head.  The other thing is that you've picked your gels out of a swatch book, they will have holes in them.  You will need to either cover these up, or source gels that do not contain holes, such as those found in the strobist collection.

There is another reason I chose to go with the FXtra gel holders, and that is as well as having velcro on the inside for attaching the holder to your flash, it also has velcro on the outside too, meaning you can attach further light modifiers.  This makes it very handy if you need to use a flash on-camera with a gel, but still wish to use something like a Lumiquest 80/20 bouncer, a snoot, or a small honeycomb grid.

This light modifier allows 80% of your flash's output to continue straight on to bounce of a ceiling or a wall or whatever, while 20% of the light hits the bouncer and is directed at your subject in a slightly diffused manner.  This essentially allows your flash to be its own key and fill light, although with varying degrees of success depending on your surroundings.  It's not really all that cheap considering what it is, but it's something I wouldn't be without in my bag for those times when it's really needed.

So, that's a little more on the how, and what I use to attach flashes to my speedlights, and a bit of why I chose to go the particular route I went - essentially speed of use and the ability to add extra modifiers over the top of the FXtra.

I'll post a little more about why you would actually need to use gels (and why you might want to even when you don't need to) at some point in the future.

Yongnuo YN460-II Quick Review

So, my other order came in today, which included a pair of Yongnuo YN460-II flashes, 2 more RF-602 Tx/Rx kits with Nikon cables, and a couple more RF-602 receivers, bringing the total up to 3 transmitters and 7 receivers now, which should be plenty for the various tests I have planned.

I had a quick play with them earlier today just to see how well they'd work out for the whole repeating flash thing, and while not entirely reliable for fast stroboscopic stuff as an optical slave, they didn't work too badly.  Their power output is quite nice, and they're slightly larger in size than the Nikon SB-600 flash (as you'll be able to see from the images a bit lower down the page).

The thing that rather surprised be about the flashes, when I read about it, is that they were "sort of" compatible with the Nikon CLS system.  No, you cannot control them via a CLS commander, however they have a second optical slave mode which completely ignores the CLS pre-flashes and only triggers on the main exposure, making them ideal for something like background lights or to light up a Hilite or something, while still retaining full iTTL control on the subject via Nikon SB-900s.

The infrared trigger for use as an optical slave has been moved since the YN460.  It now resides behind a little red plastic cover on the front of the base of the unit.  The flash head will rotate vertically from -7 to 90°, clockwise 90°, and anti-clockwise all the way to 180° (the same as the Nikon SB-600), so having the body of the flash pointing at another light source while the head points at your subject (or whever you need it to) should rarely be a problem.

There is no "locking system" to hold the flash head at any position, but you do get rather satisfying clicks at various points while rotating the head to different angles.  I'm not so sure about the locking wheel on the foot yet, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.  Perhaps I'm just too spoiled with Nikon's quick-release flash feet.

Again, the build quality of these extremely inexpensive flashes has impressed me.  They feel pretty solid in the hands, although the cover for the battery compartment see,s require a little persuasion to click shut properly without the risk of breakage.

The controls on the back, while fairly primitive when compared to something like the SB-900, are straightforward and to the point.  There is an on-off button, which has to be held down for several seconds before the unit actually turns on or off, although unlike the Nikon SB-600, it sits proud of the interface and could possibly be depressed for a long enough period of time to turn it on while in transport.  Fortunately, when in "M" mode (the default when you turn it on) the flash automatically goes into sleep mode after about 3 minutes of non-use, and turns itself off completely after 30 minutes, but it's still probably a good idea to remove your batteries immediately before packing up to travel.  In S1 & S2 modes, it automatically powers down after 60 minutes of inactivity.

The "Pilot" button gives you a quick flash trigger.  The "Mode" button allows you to switch between standard manual flash mode, S1 and S2 modes.  S1 is your bog standard optical slave mode; when it sees another flash, it triggers.  S2 is the pre-flash-ignoring optical slave mode.  This is the one that allows you to add the YN460-II to a CLS setup (in a limited fashion, obviously).

The power buttons allow you to go from 1/64th to the full power of the flash, which has a GN of 38 @ 35mm & ISO100.  These settings can also be fine tuned in 1/7th of a stop increments for a total of 46 different output levels.

So, another result for Yongnuo as far as I'm concerned.  Between these and the RF-602 gear, I'm very happy.  I wonder if they'll ever produce a flash that has the RF-602 receiver built in?  Oh, and a 3.5mm sync port would be handy too (and I'm sure David Hobby would agree with me). :)