Behind the Lens

4.10The Magic of Mireds: To Gel or not to Gel, That is the Question!

In several of the previous articles I’ve talked about color correction filters for lighting. Especially when dealing with combinations of daylight and tungsten sources, I always advocate correcting the daylight to tungsten as opposed to vice versa. This month, we’re going to delve a bit deeper into color correction filters.

Color correction filters for lighting are often called “gels” as they used to be made from natural animal-product gelatin (just like Jello!) but are now most often a polycarbonate plastic, which lasts longer, is more robust, and has a higher melting point than traditional gelatin.

There are four major types of color-correction gel: CTB (blue), CTO (orange), ...