Like most photographers, I don’t want to carry
more photographic equipment than I have to when
I am shooting on location. The solution is simple—
I can place a Rosco^3 / 4 CTO (continuous tempera-
ture orange) gel over the studio flash or camera flash
itself. I would recommend a portable studio flash
unit with a 22-inch beauty dish or a medium softbox
attached as the final light modifier.
CTOs are commonly used by Hollywood pho-
tographers and cinema photographers to create
warmth, especially when applying edge, rim, or ac-
cent lighting while creating dramatically lit photo-
graphs. CTOs come in various fractional strengths,
from^1 / 8 to a whole (also called a “full”) CTO. My
personal favorites for edge, hair, accent, and rim
lighting are the^1 / 8 and^1 / 4 CTOs, but to get the sky
a nice, deep blue, it should be at least a^3 / 4 CTO, or
Rosco #3411. This gel costs around $6.00 for a
standard full sheet and is also available in longer
rolls, which are obviously more expensive. You can
order them from Samys.com online or purchase
them at your local photo store or theatrical supply
house. The^3 / 4 CTO is designed to convert the color
temperature of any 5500K light source into a
3200K (tungsten) color temperature light source.
I often tape the gel over the flashtube, then at-
tach my Chimera softboxes or tape the full gel sheet
over my 22-inch Hensel beauty dish—it fits perfectly. Chimera makes a^3 / 4
CTO diffusion panel that replaces the standard white diffusion panel on a soft-
box. Sometimes I prefer using the CTO panel to placing a gel over the flash-
tube, as it allows me to turn on the modeling lamp on the flash head without
the heat of the tungsten modeling bulb melting the gel.
These CTO gels and panels instantly provide the color of tungsten light
without the heat and harshness! As a last resort, though not as flattering to the
model’s skin, I can cut a piece of the CTO gel from a sheet or pull out the
sample from the free sample gel books most photographic stores provide to
their customers and tape it to the front of a pop-up flash or on-camera flash.
When I have changed the color temperature of my flash to tungsten
through the use of a^3 / 4 CTO and have set my white balance to match, what-
68 LIGHTING FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
FACING PAGE—Here, Kim is illuminated with a studio flash out-
fitted with a 22-inch beauty dish during one of my Virgin Is-
lands photography workshops. Kim is standing on the ledge of
an infinity pool, making it look as though she is standing on
water. The beauty dish is covered with a Rosco Cyan gel and
the camera is custom white balanced to this blue-green color
cast. The custom white balance adds red to remove this color
cast, thus Kim appears to have normal skin color, but since
the flash does not illuminate the sky, the sky turns red. The
red saturation is controlled by the camera’s shutter speed.
(CAMERA:Canon EOS 5D fitted with a Canon 85mm f/1.2L USM
lens. SETTINGS:85mm effective focal length,^1 / 200 second shutter
speed, f/5.6, custom white balance, ISO 100)