I’ve had a couple of Godox Ad200s for a few years now and I have one with the Fresnel head attached and the other with the Godox H200R round head attached. My main reason for this is simply because they are just easier to gel. I have a couple of packs of Rouge flash gels and a
couple of Rouge grid gels too for each head. I was always using the Godox AKR1 magnetic system for the round head as this was ridiculously fast to change. The standard Rouge flash gels never actually fitted my AD200 fresnel head properly though. With gels, any white light escaping washes the gels saturation out! There was always a gap between the gel and the Fresnel head unless I either gaffer taped the gel down, or double stacked the gel. Double stacking changes the colour and power output which isn’t ideal. The Godox AD200 comes with a bare bulb too but these are generally effort to gel so I never used them. However, I finally decided I spent a little time and effort to create some quick ‘slip on’ gels for the bulbs. The idea was simple, I could use the bare bulbs which (arguably) spread the light better but also require no attachment to the heads. Literally, just slip on and fire away.
I’ve got a tonne of gel sheets of varying sizes and even my standard Lee gels sheets wouldn’t miss a little corner missing! (I rarely use standard reflector dishes with gels as I often want something either softer or not to be restricted to just dishes and umbrellas). I’ll show you a few ways how I use (and abuse) my gel sheets below soon..
I found one of my most battered gels and started to cut it up in a few different ways to try and cover the bulb as best as I could. I found cutting a strip to wrap the bulb, and cutting a separate disk to sit on top, then just covering it in sellotape was the most convenient and best way. It’s not the prettiest but the bulb is completely covered, there’s no light leaking, and no need for external attachments. A mini win I’d say. Admittedly, as the bulb is completely covered, It keeps the heat in so time will tell if the gels melt. The gels are heat resistant, but if they melt then so be it. Sacrificial gels.
I’m at a point where gelling things like the fresnel head is getting to be effort and more time consuming than needed so I’m starting to avoid using it as much as possible. To top it off, I’ve lost the blank magnetic ring from the Godox AKR1 kit I was always using to gel the round head too. That’ll probably turn up somewhere but it’s making gelling the AD200s more effort than they need to be. So I want to switch to bare bulbs partly because of convenience and partly laziness. Either way, I made some gels for my Godox AD200 bare bulbs and we’ll see how long they last.. Clearly, I have a tonne of confidence in my scissor and sellotape skills.. If they don’t melt in a couple of months I’ll follow up and sing my praises!

Quick follow up

It has been both a success and a couple of small failures. It's made gelling the bulb easier, but I've had one get stick to the bulb casing and needing to cut cut off. I ran an AD200 at half, then full power for about 50 shots and the gel just decided it wanted to very tightly hug the bulb. So basically don't run at high powers. Which is obvious, but guess who ignored this..

Crudley executed but they do the job