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.