kpassaur Loc: Valrico FL

If you don’t know what gels are I won’t bore you with details, if you are a newbie all you need to know is that for the most part it is just colored plastic that you can shoot light through. So if you use two flashes you can focus one flash on the subject and then one with a gel on the background - with a white wall you can have virtually any color you want. Keep in mind I am making this simple. Some of these are optically better than glass and are used on a lens for color correction.

Mostly they are used by the movie industry and they usually purchase large ones and they have hundreds available to choose from. With so many available manufacturers such as Lee, Rosco, GamColor etc. put out swatch books for free. These swatches are for the most part to small for anything in the movie industry, however they are large enough to cover a flash head. Well over time people figured this out so for the most part they are not free anymore but real close. They are around $5 each delivered (some will say free and charge you $5 for shipping) and most contains 100 of samples. The swatch sizes are not the same but all of them that I have gotten will cover the head of your flash.

These sets also contain ND filters so if you have a holder in the back of your lens you can cut them to fit. The swatches are big enough so that you can get two ND filters out of each swatch. The sample books usually have a 0.3, .09 and a 1.2 so, 1 stop, 3 stops and 4 stop filters for $5.

jmccabe Loc: Wheeling WV

Thanks for the info..have a great day.

jmccabe Loc: Wheeling WV

Thanks for the info..have a great day.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks for that.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Rosco has a Strobist 77 piece Color Gel kit for $5.95 Note: the Strobist with a strobe gel holder is $18 at B&H also probably similar at Adorama... BUT I did notice that the wallet to carry them in was $17.
The swatch books are $2.95 plus shipping
The other brands are probably similar. I looked at the Rosco site and didn't see the swatch book available there but you can probably call.

So kpassaur thank you for reminding me.. I had forgotten about this and / or blown it off as my mind sometimes wanders.. lol Great post.

kpassaur Loc: Valrico FL

Rosco actually has a couple of them. I got mine from http://www.stagespot.com/catalog/product/view/id/2064/ it was $25 and change delivered for 5 books. I was only after the ND filters and they ended up being about $1 each which beats the $13 I was paying for one Kodak ones.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Great!!! thanks for the link. I did notice that Rosco also has a square filter holder for DSLR and may look at that too. However I may pass out at the price.. lol

jmccabe Loc: Wheeling WV

Type sample book in search at Rosco.. there are several to choose from. cost $7.50-jm

jmccabe Loc: Wheeling WV

Here is a link to get to the sample page.. live well

http://www.rosco.com/sbreqs/

dat2ra Loc: Sacramento

What size samples are we talking here? For Speed lights or studio strobes (12" x 12")?