Gels

Does flash gels affect the color of the bokeh?

I noticed some pictures have a yellow-orangey tone and the bokeh in the pictures have the same color scheme too. Is this the result of flash gels? Thanks.

Public Comments

1. I wish you could post a link to the type of photo you mean, however, I think you are misunderstanding why a flash is gelled. First of all, if both the subject and the background have a yellow - orangey tone, it sounds as if NO flash was used. That sounds as if the photo was taken under tungsten light with no proper white balance correction. A flash is gelled to MATCH light sources. So for instance if there is strong tungsten lighting in a room and you will be using flash on your subject, you are now dealing with two different light sources with vastly different color "temperatures". So you put a gel on the flash to match tungsten lighting and use a tungsten correct white balance. The ambient light is your main dominant light in the photo, and you are simply using the flash as mostly a fill source and you are matching it's color output to the ambient surroundings. The shutter speed on the camera is "dragged", i.e. set relatively slow, to allow more ambient light to make up the exposure. Now, you CAN put a gel on the flash for the only reason to change the color of a photo, but you have to have your flash as the only light source or you will still have mixed lighting. Using a gel on a flash simply for a color cast is usually only done for a background color on a backdrop near the subject. steve
2. No - unlikely. More likely is that the light source is tungsten and the camera's WB is set to daylight (or Auto, but it's not corrected enough). Flash gels are used to change the colour of the light, OR to match existing lighting conditions (so if you're shooting under flurescents, you'd gel the flash with a fluorescent gel, and switch WB to fluorescent, for example).