Cinema and Stage LED Light Manufacturing

Calibration is an industry challenge

Achieving high color accuracy during Cinema LED light manufacturing is important for Stage Performance and Cinematic Film production.  However trying to maintain consistency in LED light manufacturing can be a frustrating, time consuming, and costly endeavor.

CG01 Color Genius product image

Color Genius LED Light Calibration

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Cinema LED light manufacturing and color accuracy

Achieving color accuracy and consistency during Cinema LED light manufacturing is  important for Stage Performance and Cinematic Film production.  Cinema directors and lighting crews are demanding and meticulous about light quality.  However trying to maintain consistency in LED light manufacturing can be a frustrating, time consuming, and costly endeavor.

Cinematic and Television Light Meter Handbook

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Why Cinematic LED Light accuracy is important

Stage Performance LED Lighting problems

The end users of Stage Performance LED lighting are directors and lighting crews – they have the challenge of setting up consistent color lighting throughout a performance area. Even though the lights are of the same type and make, the color performance and color behavior often vary – the lighting director will easily still notice variations.

Shooting Film and LED Lighting problems

Film lighting directors pay attention to lighting color accuracy because cameras see colors differently than humans.  The raw video has to be color adjusted in post production by a “colorist” to achieve final color fidelity for human beings (for the big screen). If the LED light colors are not consistent in the initial shoot, it will wreak havoc for the colorist.

Why is it so hard to maintain LED color consistency during manufacturing?

All LED manufacturers know that the variance in color is an inherent problem in the LED chips that are supplied to them.  LED chips are made from materials that are not necessarily uniform and consistent from batch to batch.  It means LED manufacturing always need to inspect and tweak their manufacturing processes.

Spectrometers are tools of the trade

Handheld spectrometers are indispensable tools employed by LED manufacturers to check the color accuracy of their lights during RD light development and during production quality control.

Read on about UPRtek Cinema Spectrometer – CV600

CV600 product description

LED manufacturers can calibrate their lights, but it’s costly and time consuming.

Some manufacturers go to great lengths to resolve these inconsistencies in LED light color.  They will develop their own hardware, software and “ratio tables” to try to calibrate their lights and then use spectrometers to validate their efforts.  But these are only make-shift solutions that’s time consuming and expensive.

Ratio Tables – Manufacturers do calibration by checking a sample LED light (e.g. 5000K CCT) against a spectrometer.  If there is a difference, they will make RGBW color adjustments to achieve a CCT closer to the planckian curve – these adjustments are recorded into a “ratio table”. They will then take the ratio table data and burn it into the firmware of each light during production so each light can make these color adjustments.

The problem is that if there is a new batch of LED chips, the current ratio table will be useless, and they will have to make a new ratio table.

 Read on about Color calibration and Ratio Tables

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Automated calibration is the future.

What LED manufactures are now turning to is automated calibration.  This means using specialized equipment to capture light data from an LED light and determine it’s spectral characteristics. This data is then returned to the LED light so it may know how to mix it’s colors accurately to be consistent with CIE 1931 standards.

This will require some integration effort by the LED manufacturers RD engineers, but this is a ground breaking step in calibration that will certainly eliminate the long standing color accuracy problems in our industry.

 Read more about the Color Genius (auto calibration)

Get the Cinematic-Photographic Light Meter Handbook here

Cinematic and Television Light Meter Handbook

Color Genius – Help on the way.

LED light color accuracy for Cinema and Stage LED light manufacturing has been the thorn in our industry for a long time.  UPRtek has been developing Spectrometer and Automated Calibration equipment for just this specialized problem and is eager to help LED manufacturers finally get a handle on it. It gives manufacturers a relief from complex, costly and frustrating RD efforts – but more important, light consistency will give lighting directors and stage directors great confidence in your products.

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About UPRtek

United Power Research and Technology

UPRtek (est. 2010) is a manufacturer of portable, high-precision light measurement instruments; Handheld Spectrometers, PAR meters, Spectroradiometers, Light Calibration Solutions.

UPRtek HQ, R&D and manufacturing are all based out of Taiwan, with Worldwide representation through our certified Global Resellers.

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