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I'm searching suggestions to quickly and easily add a gel to color correct light from a giant softbox to match ambient. In my application I'm using a CTO for tungsten ambient.

The equipment I'm using is a Paul C Buff giant foldable softbox mounted on an AlienBees AB800, but I'm hoping to hear suggestions that will work for any flash/softbox setup rather than specifically PCB gear.

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Shouldn't it be possible to attach some kind of gel holder directly to the flash unit, and then softbox on top of that?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeap. A scotch tape can help. :0) The simpler the better. \$\endgroup\$
    – Rafael
    Aug 4, 2015 at 18:55
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I have found that clipping the gel to the speedring of the modifier (e.g. large soft box) generally works well. You'll need a large gel (e.g. 1' x 1', or a longer roll, e.g. 1' x 3') to get good coverage.

Some manufacturers sell a flash bulb cover that adjusts color temperature. For example, this Profoto unit reduces effective color temp by 600K.

http://www.adorama.com/PP504335.html

This is obviously an expensive option, and I don't know whether Buff's lights offer this.

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I haven't constructed this yet, but my plan is to mount a 7" stainless "stove burner cover" from Target to the speedring. The standoff (long bolts should be around 4" I figure, maybe 5 or 6. Then with the baffles off my silver lined 7' octa becomes a huge beauty dish. And, it should be straight forward to wrap a gel around those standoff bolts to re-balance color.

Sorry it's late, hope it helps someone.

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You can pretty much ignore the baffles. Just duct tape a CTO gel sheet/s to the inside of the softbox between the two diffusers. Been meaning to play with this for a while and it works nicely. I used a white lit background, set a custom white balance to cancel out the CTO and the background turned a lovely, evenly lit blue. Also used a grid to keep the main light off the background. Since my fill is from a 1m white reflector, it will be using light from the main light and won't wash out the colour.

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Does your softbox have an internal baffle? If so, you could gel to that and use velcro or clips to hold it in place. You may need to cut the gel down to fit, not sure if you're willing to do that or not.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ It has an internal baffle, I'll have to take a closer look to see if light can leak around the baffle reducing the effectiveness of the baffle-mounted gel. \$\endgroup\$
    – Canon Gangsta
    Jul 28, 2010 at 16:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ It would have to be a substantial amount of leakage, I would think, to be dominant enough to overcome the correction. \$\endgroup\$
    – Joanne C
    Jul 28, 2010 at 18:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ Upon closer inspection, the amount of leakage would be very substantial, additionally, the baffle in the 30x60 soft box is enormous, yet, it leaves significant gaps all around. I may be on my own for a solution. \$\endgroup\$
    – Canon Gangsta
    Jul 28, 2010 at 22:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ Well, you can move closer to the flash, but then you'd probably need to attach your own velcro to the inside of the soft box. That's pretty easy to do with velcro tape, but it's not generic as such, though it becomes so if you always have velcro with you... \$\endgroup\$
    – Joanne C
    Jul 29, 2010 at 3:39

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