Gelling softboxes?

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Steve-T

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Am pretty new to photographing people so need a little advice.
I have a job coming up soon to photograph a few people in an office environment and wondering how to cope with White Balance under flouredcent lights.
Would you normally gel for flourecent bearing in mind I might use a large Octa or beauty dish or would you turn off the flourecents and light the background whatever that might be at the time?
Or of course any other technique I havent thought of.
Thanks
 
If you're using studio flash (as opposed to hotshoe flashes) then no, because the power of the studio flashes is more than enough to totally overwhelm any normal level of ambient light at any normal shutter speed.
Just do a quick test, at the f/ that you will be using with the flash, and with the shutter speed set to something like 1/200th - 1/250th, and with the flashes turned off. If there is virtually nothing recorded on the camera screen then what is there will make no practical difference.
 
Garry Edwards said:
If you're using studio flash (as opposed to hotshoe flashes) then no, because the power of the studio flashes is more than enough to totally overwhelm any normal level of ambient light at any normal shutter speed.
Just do a quick test, at the f/ that you will be using with the flash, and with the shutter speed set to something like 1/200th - 1/250th, and with the flashes turned off. If there is virtually nothing recorded on the camera screen then what is there will make no practical difference.
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you're not going to just light the office with the one octa unless you want it to look utterly awful, you're almost always going to in reality drag the shutter to let some ambient in

as most offices have a fair amount of daylight coming in (unless they're particularly grim!) I don't normally see the need unless the floros are really particularly disgusting. shoot a grey card both in front of the subject and without flash to help fix things if need be, but most of the time it looks fine and how our eyes are used to seeing people in an office. Relighting the entire of the office environment can be pretty difficult, or basically impossible, depends on how tight you want to get the shots.
 
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Agree with Dave. Don't bother.

Gelling to match fluorescents really needs trial and error in situ, they vary a bit and and they could also vary in colour throughout the office, not to mention daylight mixing in. Nightmare, and probably unnecessary anyway. If you're unlucky, a bit of local colour adjustment on the background is easy enough. Only thing to be wary of is strong colour shifts if you catch them mid-flicker with a fast shutter speed, but as Dave says you'll be dragging the shutter anyway to bring up the background - unless you blast them with flash so they look like they're working in a cave.
 
Two different approaches giving the same answer, but for different reasons...

More power (studio strobes/multiples) allows you to provide the only light contributing to the image...no need to gel.

Lower power/fewer lights requires you let in the ambient/fluorescents. But that isn't necessarily a negative as long as you get the skin tones (subject lighting) right. Viewers know/have an "expectation" as to what skin tones should look like. But the "environment" is largely an unknown, so there is a lot more tolerance for variations in the setting's lighting/colors... it can even add visual interest. If you get lucky and only have two temps to deal with (subject/BG) then selective edits are relatively easy (but not perfect) if you find them necessary...no real need to gel.
 
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HoppyUK said:
Agree with Dave. Don't bother.

Gelling to match fluorescents really needs trial and error in situ, they vary a bit and and they could also vary in colour throughout the office, not to mention daylight mixing in. Nightmare, and probably unnecessary anyway. If you're unlucky, a bit of local colour adjustment on the background is easy enough. Only thing to be wary of is strong colour shifts if you catch them mid-flicker with a fast shutter speed, but as Dave says you'll be dragging the shutter anyway to bring up the background - unless you blast them with flash so they look like they're working in a cave.
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Agreed.
Back in the day when everything had to be shot on large format tranny film, with no PP available, the perceived wisdom was that we needed to gel each individual fluorescent tube to turn it white - gels were made for the purpose but apart from the cost in terms of both gels and time, there was always a mixture of different colour tubes, which made the whole thing a bit of a nightmare.

So, we offered clients a choice - £X with either the fluorescents showing the wrong colour, or switched off, or £Y with them individually gelled - and the clients never thought that another £1000 or so was worth the extra:)

So, forget about it, it's a non-problem.
 
Many thanks all. Much appreciated. I do have enough studio lights to light the whole scene but with minimal experience at this kind of work it is best avoided, not even allowing for the hassle to the office of being in the way. So I think you are right, I shall ignore it. I suppose I could take a second shot without people and blend the two images or create two images from the same shot in Lightroom with adjusted WB and then blend them if I really need to if selective local edits don't cut it.Or as Garry suggested, switched off may do it, then there is just daylight and flash to contend with.
 
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