Converting OLD gel to new gel, any ideas?

D

Dustincoc

Active Member
A couple years ago I did a production of Urinetown and I dug into my gel stash to get the lighting up in little time for cheap. My gel stash isn't modern gel but rather very old stuff that hasn't been made in several decades such as Cinemoid and Roscolen.

I'm working with the same director now and they want the same or similar lighting for this show. I dug up my old cheatsheet and it appears I used the following colors from the old stash. 532(sort of an aquamarine blue, somewhere between R363 and R66, either one of those would probably work) 510(a pink), 523(green), 532(purple), 915(orange), and 517(a different, yet similar blue).

The only colors I'm concerned about duplicating at this stage are the first 2(the 532 and 510) as I already have an idea on what I'm going to use in place of the rest. I'm thinking R337 in place of the 510 and either R363 or R66 in place of the 532.
 
The Rosco Roscolene line had an 800 number scheme. Hopefully somebody else can remember what 500 series is.

The Cinemoid line was pretty much picked up by Lee with a retention of the general number scheme, so Cinemoid 51 became Lee 151.

Neither the Apollo nor Lee online converters accept 500 series colors, so unless you have a swatch book, it's going to be hit/miss.
 
Brigham was the "aughts", Roscogel actually had two different numbering systems. There was the "old" system that was used until about 1959 which was also the "aughts", then it was completely renumbered as 200s. Cinemoid was originally also numbered in the "aughts". I don't know exactly when it required it's 500 prefix. Mid 1970s? For a short time in the 1970s there was the precursor to Roscolux called Roscolar that had a 900 prefix and more or less followed the same color sequence as Roscolene.

When I have a little more time later today I will look up the colors your are talking about in _Color Science for Lighting the Stage_ by WARFEL and KLAPPERT.
 
Cinemoid 532 was called Medium Blue and is a pretty dark blue. It looks nothing like R363 or R66, to my eyes is looks closer to R74!
Cinemoid 510 was called Middle Rose and to my eyes the closest Roscolux equivalent would be R4830. R337 is also a pretty close match. Seems to have a bit less green in it than R4830 does.
Cinemoid 523 is Light Green. Closest Rosco match to my eyes is R4490
The next color you list is another 532 as a purple. Not sure what advice to give there.
Cinemoid 517 is called Steel Blue and is really almost a cyan. I would sub it with Rosco 4330.
The color you list as 915 COULD be Roscolor 915 which is called Golden Amber. It's closest Lux color is R21.
 
Lee 132 is nothing like what I have down as 532. You seem to be right on the rest of the colors.
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I'll head out to the garage in a few and dig out my stash. Maybe I can find a full sheet. I may have written the wrong number down or used a different color than I planned.
 
Scenemaster60 said:
From those pics, neither of your 532s match Cinemoid!
Here are pics from the swatch book I have (which is pre-500 numbers)
View attachment 11583 View attachment 11587 View attachment 11585 View attachment 11586
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I hadn't ever caught that typo. The purple labled 532 is supposed to be 526, at least according to my color sheet from the show.

Just went through the full sheet section of the stash and no luck finding a marked sheet of that color. There were a couple sheets with absolutely no marks on them that were really close.

I saw a lot of 500 series and 900 series sheets with a couple 800 series. I'm going to take the full sheets back out and bring in the box of cuts.

I came by the stash back when I was in college and we were cleaning out a lot of old stuff. It was on its way to the trash and I intercepted it. It may have been labeled wrong as well since the department wasn't very tech oriented back when this stuff would have been purchased.
 
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@Dustincoc, The first photo in post#9 above that you have identified as 532 looks like 515/L115 to me. In the third photo, your 532 looks like 536/L136. Good practice including an actual swatch of the color media on your magic sheet. :clap:
Scenemaster60 said:
From those pics, neither of your 532s match Cinemoid!
Here are pics from the swatch book I have (which is pre-500 numbers)
Click to expand...
IIRC, the manufacturer Cinemoid never adopted nor approved the 500 prefix. Thus I don't think you'll ever find a swatchbook with 5xx numbers. That was likely done by an electrician or perhaps a sales office somewhere (NYC) as an aid to avoid confusion between lines. Ah, the good old days when we were innocent (naive) enough to think that one manufacturer would never have more than 100 colours in its line. Even today, Apollogel is the only one of the "big four" that officially uses a letter prefix (APxxxx). But we all know that L=Lee, G=GAM (or Gelatran), and Roscolux=R, or Rx, or Lx, right?
 
Color pallete
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Just noticed on this that I have a different color in labelled as 532, which looks a lot closer to L132. I'm starting to think I replaced the 532 with 517 and had that in two places. I recall I paired matching hot and warm and the 517 looks like it would go well with the 510.
 
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Dustincoc said:
I saw a lot of 500 series and 900 series sheets with a couple 800 series. I'm going to take the full sheets back out and bring in the box of cuts.

I came by the stash back when I was in college and we were cleaning out a lot of old stuff. It was on its way to the trash and I intercepted it. It may have been labeled wrong as well since the department wasn't very tech oriented back when this stuff would have been purchased.
Click to expand...

The 900s may be Roscolar. That was between Roscolene and Roscolux. Roscolar started with a few blues to fight burnout in the earlier lines. They had as few as a dozen colors at first. They slowly expanded the line until Roscolux got going with a better base. Hmm, must dig for my books. I have Roscogel and Brigham, maybe Cinemoid.
 
Again (to my eyes at this hour) Cinemoid #526, which was called "Mauve" seems to find its closest Rosco match in R49 "Medium Purple" (which in my opinion is the most "truly" purple of any color in the Rosco lineup.
 
Scenemaster60 said:
Again (to my eyes at this hour) Cinemoid #526, which was called "Mauve" seems to find its closest Rosco match in R49 "Medium Purple" (which in my opinion is the most "truly" purple of any color in the Rosco lineup.
Click to expand...
I'm not worried about replicating that color. The only colors of concern are the 2 labeled as blue cross and pink cross in my first set of pictures. Although labeled as 532, I think I changed that to 517 and just didn't update the paperwork. I'll be using L117 for that. The other color was 510 and that matches up with L110.

Thanks everybody for the help.
SteveB said:
Or just use a Lee 126, which is the Lee version of the older Cinemoid color and a match for all practical purposes.
Click to expand...
 
I found confirmation today that what's labeled as 532 on my cheat sheet is really 517. I was cleaning around my desk and found a cutoff piece of that color labeled as 517 in a box with some other random stuff.
 
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