SB700 Speedlight Flourescent and Incandescent Plastic Filters

<p>Has anybody used and/or had much success with the Nikon Speedlight color plastic filters for Flourescent and Incandescent lighting? I would love to hear your experiences / Successes / Failures as I have not used them yet.</p>

 

<p>I've used them on a SB800 and they work well. They work by making the color (temperature) of the flash light match that of the ambient light do the scene appears to be lit by one color of light. Fluorescent is less reliable (take multiple shots) since by nature it fluctuates across a range of temperatures. </p>

<p>I agree with Nick. Not using flash as much as I used to, but found the orange filter worked really well with the SB-700 when shooting under incandescents. Also, the fluorescent was iffy, as the color of fluorescent lighting can be all over the map with warm fluorescent, white fluorescent, etc.</p>

<p>Best,<br>

-Tim</p>

<p>hey jason</p>

<p>get your hands on the books joe mcnally wrote<br>

this for example:<br>

http://portfolio.joemcnally.com/#!/p/books</p>

<p>i recommend "the hot shoe diaries"</p>

 

<p>one more thing.<br>

i recently upgraded my sb900's to sb910's as the sb900 really ahs some srs overheating issues and when i unpacked the sb910 i saw the new plastic filters and was screaming in joy.<br>

this acutally is the best thing that ever happened to me..for like..months!<br>

haha</p>

 

<p>I use the TN hard plastic filter but also when I need them, the thin flexible gel type filters due to their versatility. I prefer the handling of the hard plastic ones. I think working in fluorescent light is a bit of a lost cause when it comes to colour photography and while you can improve skin tones by using a FL-filtered flash to light the main subject, the result isn't as good as with tungsten/halongen and my practical solution for fluorescent light is to turn the lights off whenever possible, or convert the images to black and white. In tungsten/halogen ambient light, with additional light provided by a TN-filtered flash, I like the colours that result, it is almost as good as working in daylight. Unfortunately at least in Europe, the most prominent lights now are fluorescent, either classical or compact ones. In my apartment I use mostly halogen lights and the quality of colour and light are good for both living as well as photography. Unfortunately the bulbs have to be replaced more frequently than LED or CFLs. I hope over time the quality of the colour from environmentally friendly and energy saving lamps improves.</p>

<p>Gels to balance flash to tungsten or fluorescent have been standard equipment for photographers for decades. Honeywell made colored hard plastic domes for the Strobonar handlemount flashes in the 70s. And people discovered 30 years ago that the sample gels from Lee and Rosco swatchbooks fit almost perfectly on the Vivitars that were widely used in the 80s. <br /><br />CTO orange gels to match flash to tungsten is pretty much foolproof. In my newspaper days, TV crews usually brought their tungsten hotlights to news conferences and speeches. Still photographers didn't necessarily need flash. But if they did they put their CTO gel over their Vivitar and shot away. Perfect match. If you were trying to match to incandescent household lighting, that's a little warmer than tungsten photo lighting so you could use a little stronger gel.<br /><br />As others have said, flourescent is a little tougher since there are several variations of fluorescent, but the gel at least gets you in the neighborhood.</p>