Conventional Fixtures Color Media Inventory poll

What's in your gel inventory?


  • Total voters
    104

MNicolai

Well-Known Member
ETCP Certified Technicians
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What's in your gel inventory?

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The difference between supplementary and primarily is that if you have even amounts of each, they would each be primarily, but if you have a small ratio of one company compared to another, that would then be a case where that company is supplementary in your inventory.



My inventory consists of an equal share of Rosco and LEE gels, but the closest we get to Apollo is for gobos, and we have nothing from GAM that I know of except for their swatch book.
 
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We mainly stock Rosco. As I have said before, we carry 10-30 sheets of every color at the beginning of each year with select frosts. We also have a selection of specific Lee colors as well as a couple of Apollo and Gam colors. Perhaps next year we will be purchasing more Apollo sheets as well.
 
Definitely for the most part Rosco, but some Lee/Gam to round out as necessary. Maybe, 3 sheets of apollo, I'd like to change that for some flavor.

On a side note, multi-choice poll? Eggcellent.
 
The few times I've had a designer ask for Apollo colors, they seemed to burn through much faster than the Rosco or Gam equivalent so I don't tend to keep much Apollo around. Anyone else experience this? On a cyc, it's expected but for colortran ers I'd like to get a little more life out of my color. Especially since we need to keep inventory of our used color as half of my year is booked in events who don't have a budget for gel.
 
I use mainly Rosco because that's what I have available to me...

In high school, I don't know what we had. I think it was a mix of Old Lee gels and New Rosco Gels, but I don't know. I only used them for dance lights, we got gels from the rental house with all our lights when we did musicals.

I would like to try Apollo lights, and I will look into it when I get my info and swatchbook from Kelite
 
We have one Lee gel color which is to replace R74 cause it burns instantly.

Interesting .. I get decent life out of 74, though it is really saturated and low %T. But I've also got some later Strand 2250s that will instantly melt through anything moderately dark .. seconds, if that .. weird.

There's anything other than Rosco out there? :)
 
Seems like most everybody here and other places use Rosco (myself included) its always what I use and what we have in school. But why?
 
We stock Rosco.. now. Thanks to new management we are labeling and sorting all of our gels, before we had a teacher in charge we had them all over the place in six different folder: blue yellow purple orange red and green (yikes) now everything is good. I'm not sure why everyone (almost) uses Rosco, their gels seem to be a higher quality I guess and it's more of an industry standard.
 
We stock Rosco.. now. Thanks to new management we are labeling and sorting all of our gels, before we had a teacher in charge we had them all over the place in six different folder: blue yellow purple orange red and green (yikes) now everything is good. I'm not sure why everyone (almost) uses Rosco, their gels seem to be a higher quality I guess and it's more of an industry standard.

I don't know about that. I'm fairly satisfied with the cuts of Lee that I own.

EDIT: I should say, equally satisfied.
 
We stock Rosco.. now. Thanks to new management we are labeling and sorting all of our gels, before we had a teacher in charge we had them all over the place in six different folder: blue yellow purple orange red and green (yikes) now everything is good. I'm not sure why everyone (almost) uses Rosco, their gels seem to be a higher quality I guess and it's more of an industry standard.

Ah yes, that takes me back to high school. When I started, there was a box with assorted cuts of assorted gel, unmarked, various sizes, mostly sizes that didn't match any colorframe we had (6" Leko/Fresnel and 14" Scoop), mostly haphazardly cut or torn at best. One of the first things we did my junior year was to make sense of it all, taking a swatchbook and a Sharpie to figure out what was what, and put similar colors together (Blue, Pink, and so on). In college I learned that the grease pencil was very useful for that, and learned to use that accordingly, as well as make a folder for each color. Much better now, both at the high school and my personal color box.

Rosco is so universal because they've been at it forever. Lee's been at it forever too, but Rosco is American and Lee is British. Rosco had Roscolene, then later the much more heat-resistant Roscolux. While you can get Lee here in the US, they haven't managed to significantly displace Rosco (who also make all other manner of lighting and scenic accessory). The other two major players (Gam and Apollo) are relatively new at it, so they haven't made major inroads either. And while I can get any of them locally, and they're of similar quality, and they each cover the vast majority of colors I'd ever want, my mind thinks in Roscolux. You say "96", I know exactly what you're talking about, and I know when I've used that one. The other guys, not so much.

So it's partly historical and geographical, and partly preference and familiarity.
 
It will be cool to see what the divvy is. I've heard of one "official" poll out of the UK that involved the US, but the paper hasn't been released yet.
For those who want the more saturated colors to last longer, try Rosco Super HeatShield. It's clear, so you can use it or reuse it on any colors. Just make sure to leave an airgap between the gel and the SHS otherwise the heat will transfer to the gel and it's a waste. Or, look at the spectral curve behind the gel and change to a color that has slightly less blue/violet spectrum and more red, which is emitted by most theatre lights.
 
...use Rosco...it's always what I use and what we have in school. But why?
Why? Simply because Roscolux is the oldest, and therefore the most familiar, of the four "big brands". Lee Filters is almost as old, and many of its colors correlate to the much older (from the 1950s) Cinemoid, but has the possible stigma in the US of being "foreign," (though for some reason is often more popular than Lux among dance LDs). GAMcolor has only been around for fifteen years or so, and ApolloGel, perhaps five. Also, Rosco spends more on advertising than the others, and always has, as evidenced by looking through past and present industry magazines.

Once a Lighting Designer becomes familiar with the colors of a line, it's often difficult to persuade him/her to try something new. As I've said before, 95%, or more, of any designer's needs can be filled with any one line. Also most electricians don't have the time, money, or space for 4x 100+ colors.

I'm curious about the question of whether one brand stands up to heat better than the others. I suspect every brand has its problem colors. It's very hard to draw a scientific conclusion, as no two colors from different brands are exactly the same.
 
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Also most electricians don't have the time, money, or space for 4x 100+ colors.

That's why the Pageant is exclusively a Rosco house. Its not out of any sense of brand loyalty to Rosco. Its just that with limited storage for my gels, I only want to store one brand, and from a time standpoint, things are a lot easier if I don't have to cross reference Rosco, Lee, Gam, and Apollo.
 
I do mostly Rosco for the familiarity reason. Also, I can get Rosco colors at my friendly local theatre supply store where any other color I have to order and wait for (this makes procrastinating over color choices problematic and makes Rosco attractive).

I have some Gam colors that I'm really in love with and use all the time, and those get stocked. For instance, Gam has some high transmission cosmetic colors that I use for facelight (esp. the various shades of Ivory). But mostly I buy Rosco because it's convenient.
 
I have inventory of color from the big three (Rosco, Lee, and Gam). I probably have at least one cut of almost every color, it is very rare that designers spec a color that doesn't already have a home in my files. I spent a lot of time reorganizing the file system before last season (07-08) so that it made more sense and is now easier to use. It really doesn't take up that much space to have all the color that I have.
 
Before I came, they never bought gels, they mixed and matched out a mini roadcase that just had cutouts thrown in it like a garbage bin. Locally, we can only get Lee, and IMO, Rosco tends to burn out quicker than Lee, as its a thinner filter.

I've recently organized our gels into a filing cabinet, and the only gels I stock now are Lee.
 
I was wondering if anyone had ever heard of this. I recently had a weird experience when trying to buy gels at my local rental house. I had ask for a Rosco color and was told in reply that the rental house only sold Lee gels and that they could sell me the equivilent gel color by Lee. This seemed very strange to me. For what I was buying it didn't make a difference because it was a very common color, but I can see a situation where this would be very problimatic. Has anyone else had this experience??
 
I was wondering if anyone had ever heard of this. I recently had a weird experience when trying to buy gels at my local rental house. I had ask for a Rosco color and was told in reply that the rental house only sold Lee gels and that they could sell me the equivilent gel color by Lee. This seemed very strange to me. For what I was buying it didn't make a difference because it was a very common color, but I can see a situation where this would be very problimatic. Has anyone else had this experience??

It is true that some dealers only deal in certain brands. I think we have had at least a couple posts about this in the past. It happens.
 

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