Phoxle SpectraSnap White Balance Filter and Flash Matching Filters Review

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Experience

The SpectraSnap and flash match filters each arrived in DVD-like cases and I quickly set to figuring out how to add them to my gear. They each came with a separate lanyard for easy access while shooting, but I personally don’t like lanyards. At a sporting event I have a tangle-fest of camera straps and a press pass around my neck, so the last thing I want is to look like I’m at Mardi Gras. I had no trouble keeping even the 120mm SpectraSnap in my pockets, though I was sure to keep it in a separate from my keys. The SpectraSnap filters also came with a cloth bag that I mainly used for storing them in my camera bag.

The flash matching filters came with a metal case that the booklet slides into. While attractive, I found it too distracting and time consuming to take it out of the case, flip to the right filter, swap it with the one on my flash, and put the booklet back. One solution I came up with was to stick the filters to the body of the flash. This worked out really well: I could swap filters quickly while still paying attention to what was going on around me. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not this is wise, however, as it may cut into their longevity. The adhesive picks up patterns from the non-smooth parts of the flash and I’ve also creased one of the filters.

I had planned to do a variety of photo comparisons in different situations, but an unexpected surprise gave me a complete test of the Phoxle products in a single setting. As a cycling photographer, I often go to the velodrome to shoot nighttime races. Evening velodrome races are already a challenge as you are faced with constantly changing light that starts with waning daylight and transitions through sunset to stadium lighting. Little did I expect that forest fires would break out and fill the sky with thick smoke. Instead of the expected “Golden Hour” of sunset, the entire sky gave off a soft orange light.

I didn’t want to wreck the beautiful light, so I used the SpectraSnap to balance against a grayer target to maintain the orange cast. Artistically, I wanted a very flat look, so I chose to use the warming flash filters to match the ambient orange. I went through all three of the warming filters in the booklet as the sunset added increasing amounts of orange to the sky.

Velodrome

Velodrome Velodrome

Later in the evening I used the SpectraSnap to reset my custom white balance against the now dominant stadium lights. This was a little difficult as the general rule with the SpectraSnap is that you have to point your camera at the light source. In this case, I was shooting wide angle and my light sources were tiny stadium lights. It was hard to tell whether I was getting more stadium light or night sky, but I was able to get a custom white balance I was happy with. I kept using the warming filters on the flash as they matched the stadium lights best. When I’ve taken similar photos without the Phoxle product I generally get blue-ish, flash-lit riders spotlighted against an orange track. When I warm the photos back up in post-processing, the background orange can become too exaggerated. The combined use of the SpectraSnap and flash match filters let me keep a warm look to the riders’ skin and keep a better color balance between foreground and background. I didn’t have to go this direction: it’s just as easy to use the Phoxle products to increase the color contrast instead.

Velodrome 2

Overall, I was pleased with the results. The photos had a consistent color cast that was easy to batch process. I had far too much magenta tint in some of the later results, which could have been operator error, but I was able to fix this with a single click. I generally dislike shooting sports photos with a fill flash because the fill flash becomes too obvious, so I was very pleased to see that the flash is barely noticeable in the daylight shots. A bare flash definitely would have ruined the orange look I was going for with the fire sky.

The Phoxle products also accompanied me on a quick trip to New York City to shoot inside museums, in subway stations, and outdoors. I compared the white balance results from the museums and outdoors with the white balance tool in Adobe Camera Raw and came up with near exact results. I went in a different direction with the subway stations shots and used the flash matching filters to satisfy a creative itch I had. New York subway stations are each painted in a distinct color, so I decided that I wanted to strobe the subway cars with the same color as the station: slight warming for the yellow station, heavy cooling for the blue station, and heavy warming for the red station.

Subway Subway

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