L IGHT I NG | FEATURE
T ungsten lights haven’t changed much in nearly a century. Fluorescent tubes good enough for film and television work have been around for decades. Even LEDs have been a mainstream lighting technology for a good few years, and subject to huge scrutiny. According to both users and manufacturers, the battle to match the colour quality of legacy lighting devices is now largely won and, in 2019, new ideas are likely to centre around advanced control systems and even camera-specific colorimetry to put the final polish on quality white light. Frieder Hochheim, founder of Kino- Flo, compares the situation to one he faced when developing his famous fluorescents. “Kino-Flo got an Academy Award for solving the fluorescent colour problem. We
all the precision colour capability used in its existing LED panels. QUASAR SCIENCE Competitors seem to agree. Quasar Science CEO, Steven Strong, feels that “in the digital era, each camera has its own sensor and each lighting company has its own spectrum”. He adds: “It gets tough to capture uniform images across multiple sensor and emitter platforms.” A hint at possible new lights leaks out when Strong mentions the company’s own colour science. “The great thing is these new technologies can be configured into almost any form factor and we have some exciting ideas for the future,” he enthuses. Could Quasar have something in the works that isn’t a four-foot tube?
did that with the cooperation of Kodak, who gave us its spectral response curves, but now, each electronic camera becomes a new film stock. Compound that with the fact all artificial light is discontinuous spectrum, different cameras are going to see the same source differently [and] none of the camera manufacturers are willing to share their response curves. “So, where does that leave us,” Hochheim wonders. “Well, we can analyse the cameras. Our fixture, depending on the camera you input, will optimise its performance to the spectral response of that camera.” At the BSC Expo 2019, Kino-Flo will show LED lights matching the shape of standard fluorescent tubes, built into its seminal four-bank lighting device, but with
FEBRUARY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 41
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