Strobist Experiment: Orange Gel Filter on Background Light

had been experimenting with gel filters on flash units for several days...... mainly for hair light....... still struggling to get perfection out of that.... used snoot to get proper direction out of that snoot..... I tried that on this occasion too, but quickly found out the difference and rather used the flash without the gel filter..... this the whole background a glowing look, which is what I was really after......

this was the first time I successfully used the Simpex Prolite 400D flash head in a softbox..... I had to modify it with two thick layers of home-made diffusion materials..... now I can dial-up the power level somewhat...... I still think this flash head needs more control to work properly.....

the reflector is really struggling, along with its stand..... the makeshift stand can't be bent in any direction, which makes sure that the reflector only works horizontally...... and this horizontal workability also happens to be at a fixed height..... this need to be fixed...... and the other thing that I had noticed about the reflector is the focused beam of light..... its workable angle of view is pretty narrow..... so, the subject's slight movement takes the reflector out of use.....

anyway, this was a late night photoshoot once again........ and the idea of looking up basically came from my wife...... it was one in a series of shots..... and this one turned out to be the most interesting.......



setup.......

Lamisa poses for Strobist, 04 October 2009

it was another hasty setup...... the main idea was to utilise the umbrella along with a reflector, so that another flash could be freed to be used either for background illumination or hair light...... the background illumination worked fine before and worked again this time too..... the use of reflector against an umbrella was the first for me..... and another first was the use of a stand to hold the reflector..... in another earlier shoot, my wife helped me being the human stand....... well, you don't always get that advantage...... here is the result and the setup used........



the hair-light experiment wasn't that satisfactory, because of lack of preparation...... need to develop a better snoot or a grid to work with the gel filters....... hope to do this again some day soon.....