Background lighting with gels

[dmcantrell]

I'm shooting shots for a Dog Rescue non-profit calendar tonight and tomorrow. I have a 9' roll of medium gray seamless background paper. In the past, I've used the medium grey as my go-to background because it's easy to make various shades of grey with different background lighting techniques. I've used gels to add some color to the background as well, but the background color always seems to come out very rich, almost to where it competes with the subject for attention.

How can I make the background colors that the gels produce less saturated? Do I turn up the power of the background flashes? Do I overlay a pure white flash onto the gelled flash?

Thanks in advance.

[nameBrandon]

Honestly, I would just handle that in post with a saturation layer/mask.. but the saturation of the color is really a function of the color / density of the gel.. That's why they make gels in various shades and degrees of color. Changing the strength of the light will have much wider impact than just a small color shift and I'd do what I could to avoid it. For instance increasing the bg light's power will increase the amount of reflected light possibly spilling that color onto your subject.

Here's an example of a set of gels for sale and the various shades achieved on grey.. There's almost 40 of them.

The Lovegrove Studio Collection colour chart and reference page | Creative and business resources for photographers - ProPhotoNut

[Photogdude]

not sure what you mean by "rich"

[dmcantrell]

Originally Posted by Photogdude

not sure what you mean by "rich"

I mean the saturation of the background color is very strong.

Here is an image to help explain my question:

[texxter]

David, the controls you have over the saturation of the color are (1) the saturation of the gel itself; (2) the intensity of the light - the lower the exposure, the more saturation; (3) the intensity of the background paper- the darker, the more saturated; and (4) the number of gels of the same color you stack together - the more you stack the more the saturation.

So assuming you want to keep the same gel and modify the saturation, you can increase the exposure for less saturation, or decrease the exposure for richer, more saturated color. You may want to experiment a little. Alternatively you can use lighter gray paper.

One way to get more saturation from the same gel is to place it on a mirror and bounce light off it - the light passes thru the gel twice, once on its wat in, and another on its way out being reflected, hence incresing the gel intensity by 2x.

Hope this helps.

Paco

[Photogdude]

thanks for the clarification, just pump up the power a bit on the flash and you'll be fine

[dmcantrell]

Thanks guys!