I had lunch with a friend yesterday, and he brought me a nice present... a Roscoe sample book with dozens of colored gels! I've never used gels before, and have no idea how you're supposed to attach it to the flash head. Rather than taping the gel, I just licked it, and it adhered nicely

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The gift was timely. I bought a backdrop recently, and have seen folks using gel'ed backlights to get variety without buying multiple muslins. I set up an experiment using my standard tabletop setup, but replacing the foam core board background with my muslin backdrop.
I drafted the always cooperative Teddy as my model. First I shot with no backlight, then with a bare flash backlight, and finally with a variety of gels.
The results look promising, but after all was said and done, Teddy preferred the ungelled version

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