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.
Color Genius LED Light Calibration
Photo by Nainoa Shizuru on unsplash.com
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.
Photo by Simone Impei on unsplash.com
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.
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.
Photo by Jose Cerrato at unsplash.com
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.
Get the Cinematic-Photographic Light Meter Handbook here
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.
Handbook Series
The Flicker Handbook
Everything thing you need to know about Flicker, an insidious, potentially serious lighting artifact impacting visual safety for public places like hospitals, offices, libraries, and more...
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.
Announcements
What is a Spectrometer, Spectrophotometer, Spectroradiometer?
In the realm of spectral devices, three devices stand out: a Spectrometer, a Spectrophotometer, and a Spectroradiometer.
However, these terms have been so interchangeably used, we understand why it might be confusing. Therefore, we felt obligated to clarify their differences in one short article. Differentiate these terms like a pro!
