best CTO for LED lights?

[Joe Cage]

Hello,

Looking to buy a CTO gel to convert 5500 to 3200 only for LED lights. Are there any brands out there that work better for LEDS? As I have read that cto has an impact on the color quality on leds. So maybe there are brands more suited for LED's?
(LEE, ROSCO, ...) any advice?

Thanks!

 

[Patrick Tresch]

I would think that if you have a bad LED light for 5600k you'll have a bad led light for 3200. Now even if you analyse the spectrum of your led light and see some peaks I don't think changing the gel brand will improove something... Or did a brand make a specific CTO to correct a specific Led spectrum ?

 

[Joe Cage]

Not sure if its exists, just wondering if it does. As I have seen a aputure 300T vs an aputure 300D with a CTO. And the CRI of the 300T was much better then the 300D with the CTO gel. (so was wondering if there are better suited gels out there).

 

[Christopher A. Bell]

Lee and I believe Rosco used to make LED specific gels that were supposed to help mitigate with the spikes/missing parts of the spectrum, but I don’t know if they still do. This was years ago when LED’s were still lacking way more so than now.

 

[Les Hillis]

Ideally the light manufacturers would make colour filters specifically tuned to their lights spectral qualities, but they don't, as far as I know.

Maybe try contacting the light manufacturers to see if there's something in particular they recommend?

If it were me I'd just go with a quality brand like Lee or Rosco and have a look for myself.

Not saying it can't be done or isn't worth trying, but generally speaking the nature of the LED light and what the manufacturers have to do to make it look 'normal', doesn't really lend itself to further on-light colour filtration.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

There's a great line in Chariots of Fire where the coach says "I can put in what God's left out"

LED spectra are notoriously uneven, not at all like the full (but red-tilted) spectrum of Tungsten or the more balanced spectrum of sunlight.

If you haven't yet seen it, check out just how dicey it is to use gels with LED lamps:

Then consider why bi-color LEDs use two entirely different emitters, not filters to go from one peaky spectrum to another.

 

[Nick Gardner]

I have had no problems with just gelling modern daylight LEDs to 3200. I've used both rosco and lee full cto. I've been very happy with the results. Mixing the Gelled LEDs with tungsten practicals and traditional tungsten units. Example, I had a room with two tungsten practicals. I wanted to boost the level in the room so I put 2 18x24 led matts in the ceiling (gelled with full CTO), dimmed to taste, then the edge is a 650 fresnel of something like that. No issues.

Nick

 

[JB Earl]

Lee Zircon gels are designed to work with the bad spectra of LEDs. I will be testing them at some point, but I have to say I've seen some terrrible color out of gelled LED. If you have to gel, use all the same LEDs, don't mix and match or you will have problems in post.