We have talked white balance in the past and have reviewed different products that help you get a good white balance setting. A new product has hit the streets that does the same thing, and since the Dojo is all about helping you to improve your images and doing so at a decent price, we needed to take a look at the new Colorright disc. So let’s take a quick look at why we need white balance and if the Colorright disc is worth the cost.
For almost everything in photography there is usually a simple way to figure out what it is you are trying to accomplish, whether it is figuring out how to light something, what shutter speed to use to stop motion or to create a sense of movement. The hardest thing to do is to figure out how much depth of field will be in your images. While you can sometimes get a preview or you can always do the shoot-chimp-repeat dance until you get what you want. The trick is to actually know how to calculate the amount of depth of field you will get based on your aperture and focal length. This is where the Expoaperture discs come into play. If you want a specific effect without the trial-and-error, then the Expoaperture discs will save you tons of time and once you get a solid feel for how the system works you will eventually be able to setup your shots without it.
If you are into using gels or have wanted to experiment with it, one of the problems is finding good quality and affordable gel sets. While you can always try to get a free sample kit, the gels are small and have a hold in them. What would be almost perfect would be some pre-cut sheets with velcro straps attached. What a brilliant idea if someone did something like that right? Well wait no longer. HonlPhoto has created a killer gel kit that contains all of the common gels you would normally want. Priced at $24.95, this is the ultimate gel starting kit. More information is after the break.
I am a big fan of doing interesting lighting techniques and have been playing around with using gels to create colored background effects. While using small gels can work pretty good, I have been looking for something that works better, isn’t as fragile, and basically was designed for the purpose. What I found was the Lumiquest FX kit. The FX is a complete colored filter system designed specifically to create colored lighting effects.
