Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hello, I have a small home studio and a full frame camera going down to 50 iso. I'm still debating about buying 4 ab400 or 4 ab800 units . Would prefer to get more power for occasionnal location and outdoor work (don't want Einstein because of the cost) but read a lot of posts on other forums about not great consistency on colour and output at very low power settings on ab800. I don't want to debate about those things and don't want to give too much importance but if that proves to be a problem, I would like to have a way of reducing output without going to 1/16 or 1/32 power levels. In the past, I have used neutral density gels with novatron non cooling heads with 100 watts modeling lights and had some overheating problems in enclosed spaces (burned gels). My question is: Is it possible to neutral density gel an AB800 in a softbox or octabox (certainly not in a plm because of the barebulb requirement ) with the 150 watts modeling light without overheating and destroying the gel and/or the flashtube.
N.B. Sorry for my english, first language is french
Thank you
Francis

You can buy larger gel sheets and gel the whole face of the soft/octa box. I've also clipped a gel sheet to the interior baffle for CTO but I don't know how well that will work for ND.

Wow,

For 4'X6' softboxes and 15"X54" stripboxes and round 60" enclosed umbrellas (like softlighter and hallos) it will be very costly and impractical to gel the whole diffusion panel. My question is: Is it possible to gell the head without overheating ???

Thank you

Francis

You can gel the interior of the softbox, closer to the light, without too much problem. As long as you keep some distance away from the model lamp, you should not get any melting.