Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Sorry if I came across as beating a dead horse. Even though you came to your own conclusions after experimentation, sometimes I will expound on the why for future searchers. This is a common question, and even came up again on the forum since you posted this originally.

Another thing that is fairly common if you have the time is to remove lenses from the glasses when shooting people. If it's one person, it's not that hard to change the bounce angle of the light...if it's multiple people, it might not work and pulling the lenses saves a lot of post time.

I can see that being OK for a model, but a typical person probably isn't too happy if you take their glasses apart - especially in a group, and you don't remember which lenses go with which person's glasses!

No problem, I just wanted to get to the bottom of the problem and have a solution. It appears that my original assumption is wrong, and I'll try to make sure that anyone who heard me complain knows it's not a problem with the Alien Bees!

Oops, my bad.

jim

my bad as well. i too have transition lenses and never ran into a color reflection from having the light reflecting off my glasses.

glad that the OP found the issue.

For clarification: I am not saying it *IS* the transition coating, only that it *COULD* be. They do tend to be a yellowish color, as do UV coatings. Some transitions coatings could be susceptible, while others are not. However, I believe it is clearly a function of the glasses.

Beyond what Tech said, the yellow cast is obviously a function of the angle of light striking the glasses, since it only shows up on one lens in the sample shots, not both.