PShizzy: The Blog

Gelling your light sources for color accuracy (matching your flash to that tungsten light bulb in the room) or effect (giving a background a slight touch of blue, for example) can be the difference between a good photo and a great photo. In fact, Strobist already has two of their four articles on just this subject (here and here).

They cover using gels in order to match light sources that are too warm, like tungsten, or just plain hideous, such as fluorescent. They mention all sorts of gels, like CTO (color temperature orange) and minus green, but they don’t mention the cost of those gels. Wouldn’t it be nice to get them for cheap? How about a penny?

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Tags: lighting by PShizzy
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For those that don’t know, gaffer tape is in pretty much every working photographers bag. It’s to a photographer what duct tape is to a handy man. In fact, it’s so versatile, that I’ve used it to:

• Mark spots for my floor remote
• Keep my prefocused remote lens properly focused
• Keep the eyepiece on my cameras (because the Canon eyepiece is 20 bucks!)
• Temporarily mend a rip in my cargo pants (a big one)
• Taped over my IS and other controls on larger lenses, it prevents me from accidentally switching on or off something
• Keep my cameras LCD screen from being scratched while in my bag (just put a piece right over the LCD)

Gaffer isn’t perfect though. It’s not cheap, not compared to duct tape. At 20 to 30 dollars a roll, it can get pricey if you go through a lot of it. And worst yet, the big rolls are bulky and inconvenient to take with you. Some stores offer mini rolls of gaffer, that are great to pocket or toss in a bag, but those are 10 dollars or more a roll, and only about a couple of yards worth of tape. I can go through that in one outing. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make our own small roll from the larger roll, so that it’s both convenient and inexpensive?

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Tags: equipment by PShizzy
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