A great way to store your Vivitar 285HV Gels

I really love my Vivitar 285HV flashes. It opens up a whole universe of photographic opportunities. I previously shot with hot lights on location and they were a pain to drag around, but also a pain to gel for color correction or special effects. It took me a while to get all of my gels cut out to fit the size of the convenient slide-in slot on my Vivitar 285HV flashes. Alas, shortly after I did all the work, I misplaced them so I hated to have to cut them all over again.

One day, I was looking for something to weaken and diffuse my flash and I had someone's fairly tranlucent white business card. I tried it on the flash and it worked like a charm. A regular 3.5" x 2" business card fits the hole in my flash perfectly with a little tab that makes it easier to slide the flash in/out.

So when it was time to cut out the business cards, I decided to use one as a cutting guide for the gels. This works much better than measuring your gels. With an X-Acto, the only thing you have to watch out for is that you don't cut into the cards (or your fingers).

The business cards work well to protect the gels when not in use. I usually carry two flashes, so three cards work well to protect two sets of gels. This way I always have a business card to hand out in a pinch since you can fit a few additional cards in the pack.

Thinking about this further solved my other problem, finding a reliable, secure and cheap way to store the cards. you can often find relatively cheap business card holders where you can keep these. I got mine from a friend who returned from Colombia. I'd been using it for my regular business cards.

Now it's easy to for me to keep a full set of gels for both my flashes in one easy to find location. When I'm through, I just toss the card holder in my camera bag and I'm ready for the next shoot. I hope some other photographers can find this small hint useful.