ADVERT I SEMENT FE ATURE . QUASAR SCIENCE
CRAFTING LIGHT Quasar Science puts the artistry back into production, with innovative and stress-free colour controls
OPINION BY TIM KANG COLOUR/IMAGING DEVELOPER
BRILLIANT WHITE Quasar Science Crossfades (above) can be used as point lights, or for a host of accent and area work
light. “Why do you need anything else? It creates more work!” Hue adjustment, as well as control over temperature and plus- or minus- green changes, has been another target for improvement. “The thing I’ve often questioned about colour temperature controls is that, on many lights, they’re in fixed increments on a dial,” Kang continues. “One click is 100K, 50K, whatever. You have more increments than you need in the Daylight end, and not enough at the Tungsten end. To a cinematographer, it doesn’t make sense.” INTUITIVE COLOUR Kang found a better way, based on fundamental research nearly a century old. “There’s a certain minimum change in colour where you can barely see the
THE OPTION TO change colours at the touch of a button makes modern lighting a joy. But controlling those colours, and getting lights to match, can be complicated. Tim Kang is a cinematographer and colour/ imaging developer at Quasar Science, and someone whose work on the company’s light engine helps make things easier. “Every aspect of the light engine is new to most people,” he begins. “We hate colour modes on some lights, where you have to decide between saturated colours or accurate white. We’ve always been parameter-based. Put in the colour temperature and plus- or minus-green adjustment, so you’ve set a white point, then set hue and adjust saturation.” There’s absolutely no reason, Kang says, that simply reducing the saturation to zero shouldn’t create a high-quality white
difference half the time. That’s called a just-noticeable difference, a JND.” Making that part of the control system on Quasar’s lights develops a more intuitive control. “We set up the hue angle wheels so that each click represents a JND. It’s based on what the scientific community says the human eye sees as green, yellow or magenta. I divided it up, so as you go
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