Lee Filters Sunset Series: A Review

Lee Filters makes a sunset series of colored grad filters that come in grad yellow, grad orange, and grad red. The purpose of these filters is to emphasize sunsets or change the color of the sky. They are best used by landscape photographers with a grad neutral density, though I personally don't find that to always be necessary. In order to test the quality of the filters, I compared them to the ones I made myself, and in the case of the red and orange, Lee was superior, but I don't like the yellow and would rather use my own. Given the three colors in the "set" I think they are well-made, though it is slightly irksome that the effects are not consistent between the three colors. The photograph below was taken with my hand-made grad yellow filter, and was used as the photo by which to compare the rest of the images:

My home-made grad-yellow filter in my Lee holder, and the image used as a comparison photograph (c) 2012 J. Rae Chipera all rights reserved.  Photograph taken in San Gregorio, California.

The grad yellow seems to be great at amplifying yellows, but does not change the rest of the sky like the orange and red grad filters do, or like the one I made myself does. There is more teal in this photo than there was in real life, but the filter just did not do a great job changing the color like mine did (although, the sky looks pretty awesome anyway). The following photograph shows my complaint about the grad yellow filter:

Lee Filters grad yellow filter - (c) 2012 J. Rae Chipera all rights reserved. Licensing for use is available for this image - photograph taken in San Diego, California

The red has a great match to the color clouds turn during pink hour - and the orange is great for emphasizing the orange in the sunsets. It's also great that the grad color filters do not seem to make the exposure darker (unless used with a grad nd) with their use. Depending on the lighting there may be a stop difference at most, but for the most part the exposure is the same with or without the grad color filter.

Lee Filters grad red filter used with a 9 stop GND filter - (c) 2012 J. Rae Chipera all rights reserved - licensing for use is available for this image - Photograph taken in San Gregorio, California.

Lee Filters grad orange filter used alone (c) 2012 J. Rae Chipera all rights reserved. Licensing for use available for this image - Photograph taken near the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Preserve in Oklahoma.

I find that the red and orange do a great job creating silhouettes. In the windmills photo you see no seam from the filter across the hills and windmills. They also seem to do great to create different off-colors by changing the white balance in camera. When I use the red filter with a blue-tinted white balance, for example, I can make the red slightly more purple (though the part not in the filter comes out blue).

They have been serving me very well for my Otherworldly's series. The red and orange particularly give me some outstanding effects. However, if I were to make / sell a "set" of sunset filters I would include more than three colors (even if it meant charging more money) as there are more than three colors in a sunset. For example - it would be great to have a grad-blue filter! If you're facing east during a sunset you will also notice other colors depending on where you live.


I've preached my complaints about the Lee holder before, but I will again state that - especially for sunsets - it would be nice to have a third slot for the amount of extra money you pay for a product with the Lee name on it. - In case one wants to use two grad colors and one grad ND or something. I cannot count the number of times I've wanted a grad orange with grad nd on the bottom with a grad yellow on the top - but there are not enough slots to make that photograph happen.

Pinup Photography With Limited Photoshop Use

Question: “Do you use Photoshop for your pinup photographs?” Yes. I do. Photoshop is a tool used by most professional photographers because it allows photographers to transform a standard scene into a work of art. HOWEVER most (but not all) professional photographers also tend to use the camera for as many effects as possible.

How did I use my camera as much as possible for this photograph? 

1. I set the white balance on my camera for orange/yellow hue lights. Most DSLR cameras have a setting for this, but I like to use the custom setting.

2. I used orange/yellow-toned lighting in the studio (warm-toned light bulbs) with a diffuser. In my case - I used a semi-worn-out quartz lighting system with a white backdrop.

3. I used my camera on MANUAL MODE. Set your ISO to 80 or 100 and then use different f-stop and shutter speed settings to accomplish a slightly over-exposed photograph. Don’t over-expose it too much because it will wash out the colors. You really only need one stop.

4. I used a flash with a diffuser. This helps to bring out some of the more vivid colors - in her case her dress. The dress was actually fire-engine red so it washed out the colors a little. I would suggest having your model wear vivid colors.

5. I use lens filters: Diffusion filters have been very helpful to me for pinup. I recommend one with a slight amber tone.

6. I shoot in RAW so that I can tweak the exposure if I need to during the development stage

The after-effects are MINOR and include layers in photoshop. One thing that I usually always have to do is invert the most-important features of the photograph (select the smudge tool and then press Ctrl Alt 2 in CS4. In CS3 I think you use Ctrl Alt ~). Paste them to a new layer and select overlay. You will see that this makes a big difference.

Sometimes I add a layer blended to MULTIPLY using the photocopy filter in Photoshop. It helps define the differences around the model and helps it to have the aged look.

Another thing I typically do after the fact is add a layer of 50% gray blended to overlay with the color removed. I like to do this because adding graininess also helps the photo look aged.

So there you go. I hope this post helps to answer questions about pinup photography.