Gelatine ND filters

[Peter Blake]

has anyone actually used the 'lighting gel' sheets by Rosco etc, in an optical way?

I know the Kodak 3" gel filters are about $65 each, just wondered if there genuinely was a degradation in quality shooting thru 'lighting' type gel, or was it simply a matter of 'how one labels the same material'?

I have found a fantastic proshade by Mamiya, works beautifully with my 85mm, and has a slot for 3" gels in the back.

 

[Pete Askew]

Never tried lighting gels but I do use Lee filter gels (100 mm). They do NDs in 75 mm gel and also resin. What thickness do the slots accept?

 

[Peter Blake]

at a guess I'd say about 3mm

 

[Peter Blake]

not to worry! picked up a 0.6ND this morning in 75mm square size, for peanuts!

it was a swine to fit into the holder, there is a fiddly little frame that sits on top of the gel, but now done. perhaps I can get some spare holders and prefit the various strengths. I think I know where Mamiya's spares department is.

 

[Pete Askew]

I was going to say that a resin filter should fit in that slot OK or gels mounted in frames. You can buy packs of the frames from Lee etc quite cheaply to mount gels in. I use 100mm gels and for the more common ones you can buy them pre-mounted but some of the more obscure ones come unmounted for cutting / inserting in frames.

 

[Peter Blake]

and I also bought a sheet of '50%' ie 1 stop ND lighting gel. 570x650mm. so thousands of square millimeters.

that can be layered to go 2 or more stops, presumably. will be mainly for the 120J, which can only go down to 1/16th, which is a bit too much sometimes. but I can also test it for shooting thru, as per the o.p

 

[Pete Askew]

You have to watch out for Newton's Rings etc when you layer gels though.