Ideas for organizing a gel kit

Seth Rice

Seth Rice

Active member
Hey folks - looking for any suggestion for organizing a gel kit - I've seen the milk crate option, and it works really well - just wondering if folks have any more portable strategies that they use. (I throw my kit in my car for shoots - lacking a grip truck, or anything resembling one at the moment...) Tired of digging through my bag for the right gels onset.
 
I've seen those roll-up gel cases, but they don't seem very organized and don't hold many. I just keep the shipping tubes and sharpie them. CTO, CTB, Diffusion, CTS, and minus green. I have a clear sleeve-type plastic bag (I think a short seamless roll came in it) with "everything else" and ND rolled up in it, and a 2-gallon zip loc with trimmed pieces. But the above colors are 90% of my day.

I also take a sharpie and mark the corners of gel sheets when I get them. it's obvious if something is CTO or CTB (I don't mark that), but I do mark 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 - that can be hard to tell in the dark. And if I cut something to fit a frame, usually one of the corners will make the cut.

So 5 cardboard shipping tubes, which go in my general grip gear/globes/scrims/safety cables/junk case. If there's a slicker solution out there, I'd love to hear about it.

I've found the best way to be organized is to test all my daylight stuff and mark the gel combos to get them to 5500 or so. When I pack for a gig, gels are already in the frames or clipped to the biax barndoors. Little less hassle that way, but often you have to dial stuff in.... for daylight shoots it's usually just adding minus green or CTO to warm up a bit more.

The handiest thing is if there's a decent sized table at the gig to keep your gels ready!
 
A few year back I started carrying these gel rolls so I could have a master collection of all the different types of diffusion and color correction gels available to spec any shoot.

They don't take up much space, and are very handy.

I use a P-Touch labeler to label each sheet so an assistant not familiar with the code number can quickly find what I call for.
 

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I have several gelly rolls but frankly with the number of gels i have i put them in 5 gallon buckets. That way you can see what is available quickly.
 
That works too.

I also have several folders of cut gels, and I keep larger rolls of very big gels for ND'ing windows and such.

But since he mentioned throwing them into his car, I thought these rolls would be his best approach without taking up much space.
 
Great Solution = Artist Portfolios!
If you prefer to keep your gels flat - they come in many sizes and they will all hold EASILY 50 flat gels, some have multiple compartments even. They seal up, they have handles, and they LOOK GOOD.

I used a paint bucket and it was better than the milk crate, but I like the Artist Portfolio I got for $40 way better. They may seem expensive just to carry gels, but if you use them a lot (I don't think I hardly ever have a shoot where I don't) then it's worth the money.
 
The most common method I see is a milk crate divided up with coroplast. One space for full, one for half, one for quarter, one for eighth, one for special colors, and one for diff. Might take up a fair amount of space but if you fill everything up you'll be pretty unlikely to run out of a color, and if you keep it organized you won't have to strain your eyes to see what's what.
 
Hey guys - thanks so much! Some great thoughts! I don't carry a ton of gels - just some basic CTB and diffusion, and a little CTO - as of now, been dumping it all in a small duffel bag, and that's not working. The milk crate idea is my personal favorite, but just not doable given my vehicle situation.

Big fan of the digital juice concept there though, gave me some ideas for creating a setup of my own. Will post pics when I get it finished.
 
I use roll bags for compactness. They're about as inefficient for access as you can get though. It's a trade off really - do you need speed (milkcrate) or compactness (roll bag) more?
 
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