COLOUR SCIENCE CASE CLOSED This Datacolor kit comes with the Spyder Pro calibration device, colour charts used for shooting video or photo and a funky grey and white cube target in a handy case
correction. Daylight, LEDs, tungsten practicals, HMIs and fluorescents may all be present on the same shoot, and two fixtures labelled 5600K do not necessarily behave the same way in real life. This is where a colour meter becomes incredibly useful. The benchmark pro unit is the Sekonic C-800 Spectrometer – a highly respected tool that measures both exposure and light quality in detail. It is powerful, but also expensive. Datacolor’s Lightcolor Meter is a more accessible alternative. This compact device measures exposure, colour temperature and green-magenta shift, and works with daylight, tungsten, fluorescent lighting, LEDs, HMIs and flash. Like the Sekonic, it tells the true output of a light rather than the nominal figure printed on the fixture. That is invaluable knowledge when you are balancing multiple sources or trying to maintain continuity as daylight shifts over the course of a shoot. You can check if a light is really hitting 5600K, see whether a softbox is warming the output and correct mismatches before they affect the footage. If lights do not have built-in colour adjustment, the Datacolor system includes a gel filter library featuring Rosco, Profoto and Lee options, so you can quickly work out how to correct a source physically.
TWO METERS APART The Sekonic has on-screen settings (below); Datacolor links to a phone (below right)
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