5 Reasons to Own a Color Meter

Measure Color Temperature Outdoors

1) Use a color meter to measure the color temperature when you’re shooting outside in natural light to get the right white balance. Reflected light from the environment around you can pollute your subject when shooting outdoors. Take a quick reading to ensure that you have the right white balance and that your subject’s skin looks good.

Average the Practicals

2) When you’re shooting inside using the practicals in the room, you really need a color meter. Different light sources have different color temperatures. Use a color meter to be able to get an average for those temperatures and come up with the balance that’s best for your subject’s skin tones.

Match LEDs to the Light in the Room

3) When using LEDs with the practicals in the room, you’ll be able to figure out what temperature those practicals are, so that you can match your LEDs to them. It’s such a pain to have to correct a color crossover. You don’t want to have to deal with a different color temperature on your subject vs. what’s going on in the background unless that’s the effect you’re going for.

Consistent LEDs

4) Use a color meter to make sure your LEDs are all consistent. LEDs these days are all different colors- green, blue, magenta. You can even have the color meter tell you which Rosco gel you need to balance the light correctly.

Match Strobe to Ambient

5) For you still shooters, a color meter can measure the color of the strobe so that you match it to the color of the ambient and set your camera to the correct white balance.

You Can’t Afford a Color Meter

1) Color meters are expensive! But right now, you can get an Illuminati color meter for an early bird Kickstarter price of $200. But even if you miss that and have to get it at $300, that’s still a great deal.

Color Meters are Too Much Work

2) They’re hard to use! The Illuminati meter is bluetooth compatible. You can see the meter’s info and control it right from your smartphone, making it incredibly easy to use.

The Solution- The Illuminati IM150 Wireless Light and Color Meter

Check out the Illuminati IM150. It’s a great product which really will make your life on set easier. Keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin!
-Jay P.