Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens we’re on location, talking about using a color meter. My color meter of choice today is the CV600. I’m interviewing WWII veteran and Wilbur Richardson about his book, Aluminum Castles. We’ll use the ikan CV600 color meter to balance the different temperatures in the hangar at Planes of Fame, in Chino, California. Let’s get started and see what we can do.
CV600 Color Meter Modes
We’ve got a lot of different light sources going on in the space we’re interviewing Wilbur today. I love the ikan CV600 color meter because it has so many features to make balancing different light temperatures on set easy. There are several modes, including CCT, Flicker, CRI, Spectrum, Filter, Exposure, CIE, and Browser, which allows you to save settings.
Exposure Mode
One thing I thought was really cool about the exposure setting on the ikan CV600 color meter is that there is a continuous mode. This allows you to have your talent move through the frame while you take an exposure reading. It’s handy for when you’re shooting video in order to help keep that exposure consistent.
Using the Meter
There are so many thing going on in the hangar we’re shooting in that it makes it difficult to just guess where our color temperature is. So I took a reading with the meter in order to get my color balance in the background. I aimed it at the light sources I wanted to correct because it’s a reflective meter. I got 4200, so I set my camera and Vector Lite Pad from Rosco on 4200. We did this with the CCT mode. It made it extremely easy to get my lighting correct.
Filter Mode
Another great way to use the CV600 color meter is the filter mode. It has so many gel manufactures included. Rosco’s cinegels are what I’m using, so that’s what we entered there. You choose your color temperature target and enter it into the meter and take a reading. The CV600 will tell you which gel to use in order to get the desired temp. It’s a great feature which makes it very easy to get the results you want.
Wilbur Richardson
It was so much fun to interview Wilbur. I wish we had had more time with him, but we were able to maximize our time because we used the CV600 color meter from ikan to quickly get our exposure and color temperature down. Be sure and check out his book, Aluminum Castles, to hear more about it his story. You can also go meet him at Planes of Fame in Chino. He’s there every weekend, talking with visitors about his experiences as a B-17 ball turret gunner.
Thanks for watching. Keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’.
-Jay P.
Jay, Nice expensive toy! I always love your lessons, great job. You explain things so well. It took me years to learn this stuff, so good you can learn just about everything on the internet now. I have an old Minolta Color temp meter. It still works but isn’t accurate. Can’t get it fixed, out dated. I pretty much know the color temps of most lights from experience but sure would be nice to have a new digital color meter like that one. I thought the other models were expensive but wow. Keep the presses rolling, you and Lars are the best.
Hi JP,
Great to see someone cover this. I had thought most people didn’t feel the need to use a 3 color meter in the digital age since everything can be manipulated in post…. and I see so few new models for sale.
However, I still use an older Minolta II (3 color incident meter -old school from my analog days) all the time when shooting under fluorescents to try and balance my flash or fill light to the ambient fluorescents (a tough task). Makes my documentary images shine.
This new meter is cool, the ability to measure flicker and CRI? Awesome!
Do you color your videos in post too or is this straight off the camera? Looks incredible and I want that meter!!
Hi Davd, we don’t do much color correction on our BTS footage, just some adjustments to match exposure across the whole lesson. The video of the interview is straight off the camera. It’s a great meter, you’ll really enjoy it! Thanks for watching!