Softbox Colour

[Barney]

HI,

Having just bought a S/H Bowens wafer softbox I have concerns that the very slight yellowing it displays could introduce problems into a multi light flash set up.

Is there an accepted process for returning the diffuser material back to its original bright white?

 

[Garry Edwards]

Sort of . . .
The hard way of doing it is to stick a blue gel over PART of the inner diffuser, something like this https://stagedepot.co.uk/lighting/lighting-gel/high-temperature/62-booster-blue-lighting-gel may be a good starting point, but it can take a bit of fiddling to get it right.

But my usual bodge was to (very lightly spray blue car paint onto the inner diffuser, personally I feel that it does a better job, because I would start with just a hint of blue and then build it up as necessary, testing constantly, until it's right.

You could of course also try bleaching the material, it works on some diffusers but not on others.

You may also be able to buy a replacement outer diffuser, but even if they are available they will be far from cheap.

 

[Barney]

Sort of . . .
The hard way of doing it is to stick a blue gel over PART of the inner diffuser, something like this https://stagedepot.co.uk/lighting/lighting-gel/high-temperature/62-booster-blue-lighting-gel may be a good starting point, but it can take a bit of fiddling to get it right.

But my usual bodge was to (very lightly spray blue car paint onto the inner diffuser, personally I feel that it does a better job, because I would start with just a hint of blue and then build it up as necessary, testing constantly, until it's right.

You could of course also try bleaching the material, it works on some diffusers but not on others.

You may also be able to buy a replacement outer diffuser, but even if they are available they will be far from cheap.

Thanks for that advice,

Spraying it would scare me to death, I might try the bleach suggestion first as its something I can try immediately with no shopping.

 

[swanseamale47]

I think I'd be doing a custom white ballance or trying Ciff cleaner. Dont fancy spraying. Might be easier to just replace the diffuser material.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

Id they are all like that zero problems. If not then obviously not so great. Test them out and see what it is actually like.

Don't forget that flashes may also shift in colour a little when going from mine to max power

 

[Barney]

Id they are all like that zero problems. If not then obviously not so great. Test them out and see what it is actually like.

Don't forget that flashes may also shift in colour a little when going from mine to max power

Hi,

They are not all the same, I am going to do a tester as you say to see if there is actually an effect. After sleeping on it my thoughts are that carefully placed different colored lights are used frequently in the same shot so why not a slightly off white key light? I am going to try it on different colored materials; golds, browns and beige to see if it produces something aesthetically pleasing and/or unique. Certain skin tones could also stand it I am starting to think.

 

[Garry Edwards]

Some interesting and valid points

Flash colour output does vary. With the "budget" brands that only used one (or sometimes two) capacitors, it varied a lot. Historically, flash heads could only be set to a choice of full, half or a quarter power, this normally meant that the flash head had 4 capacitors, all used at full power, two used at half power and one at quarter power, and that was fine. but marketing created a "need" for a wide and infinite range of power settings, and this basically involved including a potentiometer into the system, which caused massive colour shifts, and especially at low power settings, and the cheaper the lights, the worse the problem . . . I remember testing one very popular American brand that shifted 1200K between max and min power, but these were marketed to people who didn't even see the problem

Move forward, and now we use IGBT flashes (mostly) and the problem no longer exists in real terms, because IGBT flashes always fire at full power regardless of the setting, at lower settings the flash is on for less time.

As for yellowing of the softbox fabric, we've had this problem ever since Chimera invented fabric softboxes (before that they were metal boxes with ground glass screens). Chimera were excellent but very expensive (and the Bowens Wafer weren't that far behind them) and we always had to correct this yellowing, and a hint of blue spray paint was the normal professional cure.

But, I'm talking about high-end professional work. I specialised in product photography, and colours needed to be spot-on, especially with fashion, for obvious reasons, and especially because, back then, everything ended up in print, so it had to be right.

Fast-forward to today, very little gets printed and nearly everything is viewed on computer, and the average viewer doesn't have a calibrated monitor, so colours are all over the place, nobody notices and nobody cares. Two of my monitors are calibrated correctly, the third one is a cheapie that I use just to keep my tools or documents, the colours are hopelessly wrong, and sitting here and moving a photo from one of the calibrated monitors to the 3rd monitor shows just how far off it is.


So, that's my long answer. My short answer is that whether the colour shift matters or not depends on a lot of different factors, and what matters to one person may not matter to another.