Colour – Correction Gels
Some of the most useful types of lighting gels are those that alter the colour temperature of a light so it replicates another light source. While these are also possibly the least exciting, they can make a crucial difference to images lit with multiple sources of light. For example, using fill-in flash in a tungsten-lit room means there will be two light sources illuminating the scene, each with a different colour temperature. The tungsten light will be an orange colour, while the flash will be very blue in comparison. Setting the camera’s white balance to tungsten will add blue to the image to neutralise the orange colour of the tungsten lights. However, in doing so, the added blue will also exaggerate the blue light from the flash, which can be very unflattering when using fill-in flash for portraits, producing a cold, pale-looking complexion.