Which Camera Lens Filter?

  • Thread starter Smokey503ski
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NaturalTherapy

NaturalTherapy

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None of those filters are the correct color balance for HPS lighting.

Method 7 makes one, not sure the size though
 
Smokey503ski

Smokey503ski

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Haven't been able to. Been really busy, I have surgery on Monday and we have a baby due in March.
Shits a little tight at the moment.
I do plan on getting one in the near future and I will do a review on here.
 
NaturalTherapy

NaturalTherapy

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@Smokey503ski
Image
Image

I use mine everyday
 
str8smokn

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@NaturalTherapy I think I saw you said you made one? On T's thread.
I'm not on Instagram,if you could show us on here it would be pretty cool of ya. How you make it..
STR8
 
NaturalTherapy

NaturalTherapy

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@NaturalTherapy I think I saw you said you made one? On T's thread.
I'm not on Instagram,if you could show us on here it would be pretty cool of ya. How you make it..
STR8
Sorry, but you misunderstood.
I had an idea for the filter and a friend helped me get it made. His company, Vivagrow, is doing distribution for the lens filter we created.
 
We Solidarity

We Solidarity

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order a sample pack of gel filters from rosco - i think they're like 10 bucks but they have a whole range of CTB (color temperature blue) that will filter various amounts of orange out. the gels are cheap and flimsy which I really like, I used to order these b/c they're the perfect size to put over a camera flash to balance it to other lighting (CTO for sunlight, CTB or green for fluorescent). I would imagine it will work as a phone camera filter, too.
 
Ooopsi

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CC filters for mounting on flashes are not meant to color correct entire shots if there's other light sources present than just the flash-light. They are rather used to adapt flash-temperature to ambient-temperature or set coloured accents.
Fact: Camera strobes and flashes are 'cold' or 'neutral' by themselves. If you flash something without gels, it will be neutral if you set the camera white balance to flash anyways. You don't need gels to make flash-light look neutral.
The problem with using flashes is: the color temperature of the flash doesn't always match the ambient temperature.
Example: if you have a very warm ambient color temperature, you need your flash to be warmer too if you don't want your picture to look 'flashed'. Without a cc filter in front of the flash, the room will look warm and the flashed subject will look cold. That's the typical 'flash-look'. Now, to correct this, you need to put a WARM gel in front of the flash to adapt the colder flash to the warmer ambient color temperature. This is why I said, cc strobe filters are not meant to color correct shots. It's only a partial correcting of the flashed objects.
Now let's take this a bit further.
Grow rooms with hps lights are really warm and very often camera's intern white balance settings can't correct it as much as you want it to if you don't flash. Problem. But if you're using your flash they will look neutral anyways because as we've seen, camera strobes are neutral. So why put some more color in front of the flash if it is neutral by itself?
If you're using a yellow gel, the flash-light will add some more yellow so there's no use in that as we don't want that orange color even if it might look less 'flashed'.
If you're using a blue gel, to 'color-correct', the difference between flash-light and ambient light will be even bigger. Just remember that light decreases over distance which means: everything flashed directly will look blue but that color will fade over distance and everything in the back will look even more orange. Flash-light is neutral so you don't need to make it bluer.
Putting a hps filter (like Arctic's and Smokeys' suggestions) in front of the lens (whole image gets filtered) or in front of the hps (entire light source gets filtered) WITHOUT using a flash is the only way to really color correct the entire image. Using strobe-gels is rather suited for correcting the temperature of the flashed object.
On the other hand, I have to admit, hps are really bright and orange and standard flashes are sometimes not 'cold' or strong enough to 'erase' the orange so using a blue gel is an option, even if not the best.
Short: gels in front of strobes do correct the flash-light but not the ambient light. If you do, you will have mixed light.

Here's an exaggerated sample of what I meant, using Rosco-gels... You'll see that only the plant changes color while the background (landscape) stays all the same. Of course it won't be that obvious in a confined space like a grow-box as the distance is very short and the walls will reflect some of the coloured light as well... so again, using a blue strobe gel is one of several options to go. It's one of the cheapest too, that's true so you don't have anything to loose here. It will work, just like We Solidarity said.

IMG 8521


Here's the same shot with the blue filter color corrected as much as possible. See how the background has turned even more yellow by shifting the blue color to a more neutral tone?

IMG 8523


I just wanted to add my 50 cents on this because you will have a harder time using flash-filters than using a filter in front of the lens... at least that's me.

However: using such methods can be really creative and look pretty cool! There's no rules here so have fun whatever method you may choose.

EDIT: Another method
Kill the hps light as much as you can by closing your aperture to the max (f22), set ISO as low as you can (100) and just flash. If your strobe supports high speed synching, than you might also reduce shutter-speeds as much as you can.
 
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We Solidarity

We Solidarity

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@Ooopsi i was saying put a blue gel in front of your lens not your flash. If you're really trying to shoot without yellow light just turn the lights off and use a flash.
 
Ooopsi

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Oh ok... sorry man! Didn't want to argue about this anyways. Just thought because you wrote 'they're the perfect size to put over a camera flash to balance it to other lighting' ...
Using these gels will work with an iPhone-lens for sure. Putting these in front of a large slr lens is another story but yeah... my bad. Sorry if I offended you in any ways!
 
We Solidarity

We Solidarity

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Oh ok... sorry man! Didn't want to argue about this anyways. Just thought because you wrote 'they're the perfect size to put over a camera flash to balance it to other lighting' ...
Using these gels will work with an iPhone-lens for sure. Putting these in front of a large slr lens is another story but yeah... my bad. Sorry if I offended you in any ways!

Nah no offense just clarifying :)

I've used these gels over slave flashes for years in photography, the sample pack is the perfect size to tape over an sb or canon ex. Roscoe makes larger sizes filters you could use over an slr but you'd have to tape it on or buy an old school filter plate to use them
 

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