What is the impact of bi-colour lighting on colour checker calibration?

A ColorChecker is one of the simplest ways to establish a reliable colour reference when shooting with bi-colour LED lighting. The important point is that the chart does not calibrate the light itself. It records how your camera, lens, white balance, exposure and lighting spectrum interact under a specific set of shooting conditions.

With a professional bi-colour fixture, this means the ColorChecker should be photographed or filmed at the actual colour temperature and lighting configuration used for the scene. If you change the light from 3,200K to 5,600K, introduce daylight through a window, change the key fixture, or substantially alter the lighting environment, capturing a new reference gives post-production a much more dependable starting point.

About the author

Enrico Ripalti

Maxima Co-Founder · Creative Director at Cinestudio

Creative director and digital artist working across commercial filmmaking, photography and branded content. Enrico combines practical on-set experience with the development and real-world testing of professional lighting tools at Maxima.

This workflow is particularly useful with professional adjustable-white fixtures such as Maxima Rapida, Maxima Spectra and Maxima Furiosa, where the colour temperature can be changed deliberately from setup to setup. The goal is not to avoid intermediate Kelvin values. It is to create an accurate reference for whatever light you have intentionally chosen.

What does a ColorChecker actually calibrate?

A ColorChecker provides a set of known neutral and coloured reference patches that can be compared with what the camera actually recorded.

In other words, it gives post-production a reference for the entire image-making chain:

• the spectral output of the light source
• the selected colour temperature of the fixture
• the camera sensor’s spectral response
• the camera’s white-balance setting
• the lens and filtration in front of the sensor
• the exposure applied to the chart
• the colour-management pipeline used in post-production

The ColorChecker therefore does not simply answer, “Is this light 4,300K?”

It answers a much more useful question:

“Under these exact shooting conditions, how did this camera reproduce a set of colours whose intended values are already known?”

That is why a ColorChecker is particularly valuable on productions involving multiple cameras, product photography, fashion, skin tones, commercial work and multi-day shoots where consistency matters.

Should you set the bi-colour light before shooting the ColorChecker?

Yes. The lighting setup should be established first.

If you intend to shoot the scene with your key light at 4,300K, set the fixture to 4,300K, establish your intensity and modifier, position the light correctly and then place the ColorChecker into the actual lighting environment.

Do not photograph the chart at 5,600K and then change the fixture to 4,300K before shooting the scene. That reference no longer describes the lighting conditions used for the image.

The same principle applies to dimming and modifiers. If you make a meaningful change to the source, particularly one that changes its spectral or spatial behaviour, a new reference can be useful.

Should the camera white balance match the Kelvin setting of the light?

Not necessarily.

This is an important distinction.

If a bi-colour fixture is set to 4,300K, setting the camera to 4,300K will usually produce a reasonably neutral starting point when working with a high-quality fixture. But the number displayed by the fixture and the camera’s white-balance value are not fundamentally the same measurement.

The fixture is describing the correlated colour temperature of the light it intends to produce. The camera’s white balance describes how the camera should interpret that illumination.

A cinematographer may intentionally separate the two. For example, a scene could be illuminated with a 4,300K key while the camera is balanced to 5,600K to retain a warmer appearance.

The ColorChecker remains useful in either case because it records the actual relationship between the light and the camera.

For technical neutrality, you can establish a custom white balance using a neutral reference. For creative cinematography, you may intentionally choose a different camera white balance and still shoot a ColorChecker so the colourist knows exactly what was captured.

Where should you place a ColorChecker when calibrating a lighting setup?

Place the chart approximately where your subject will actually be and expose it to the same dominant light.

This sounds obvious, but it is one of the most common sources of misleading references.

If an actor’s face is illuminated by a soft key from camera left, placing the ColorChecker several metres away under completely different ambient light does not accurately represent the conditions on the subject.

A good procedure is to:

1. Place the chart close to the subject’s position.
2. Orient it so the relevant light falls evenly across its surface.
3. Avoid strong specular reflections from the chart.
4. Keep it within the most representative portion of the beam.
5. Make sure the chart receives the same key, fill and ambient contribution you want to document.

If you are photographing a product, place the chart in the same lighting environment as the product rather than simply holding it close to the camera.

How should you expose a ColorChecker correctly?

The chart needs to be exposed cleanly enough that the patches retain useful colour information without clipping highlights or burying darker references in noise.

The goal is not necessarily to use some universal exposure value. Different cameras, log curves, RAW workflows and colour-management systems treat chart exposure differently.

Instead, aim for a technically healthy exposure appropriate to your camera and recording format.

Useful principles include:

• Avoid clipping the lightest patches.
• Keep darker patches sufficiently above the noise floor.
• Use waveform monitoring when available rather than relying only on the rear LCD.
• Keep exposure consistent if you are creating references intended to be compared between cameras or shooting days.
• Follow the chart manufacturer’s recommended workflow when generating automated camera profiles.

For cinema cameras shooting Log, the chart may look deliberately flat on the monitor. That is completely normal. What matters is that the underlying recorded values remain usable within the intended colour-management workflow.

Should you white-balance from the white patch on a ColorChecker?

Not automatically.

Depending on the specific chart, the brightest white patch may be designed primarily as a tonal reference rather than as the ideal patch for determining neutral white balance.

Many professional charts include dedicated neutral grey patches that are better suited to establishing white balance.

The manufacturer’s instructions should therefore be followed rather than assuming that the brightest patch is the correct neutral reference.

This matters because accurate colour calibration starts with a dependable neutral reference. A slightly reflective or overexposed white patch can produce a misleading correction.

Do you need a new ColorChecker reference every time you change the bi-colour setting?

If colour accuracy is important, it is good practice to capture another reference after a meaningful colour-temperature change.

Consider a simple example.

You begin an interview with a Maxima Spectra at 4,300K because daylight is entering through a nearby window. Later in the day the production moves to a controlled interior and you change the same light to 3,200K.

The second setup represents a different spectral environment. Shooting another ColorChecker reference takes only a few seconds and gives your colourist a clean reference for both setups.

The same applies when:

• changing between daylight and tungsten-balanced settings
• moving into a different room
• changing the dominant ambient source
• introducing or removing practical lights
• switching to another fixture model
• changing a major modifier or diffusion setup
• starting a new shooting day where exact colour continuity matters

You do not need to interrupt production for a new ColorChecker frame after every tiny adjustment. The idea is to create references whenever the underlying lighting condition changes enough that the previous reference no longer describes the scene.

Are intermediate bi-colour settings less suitable for ColorChecker calibration?

No. A well-designed professional bi-colour fixture should be usable throughout its intended CCT range.

Intermediate settings such as 4,000K or 4,500K are not inherently less valid than 3,200K or 5,600K.

In fact, the ability to choose those intermediate values is one of the main creative and practical reasons for using professional bi-colour lighting.

The relevant question is not whether both warm and cool LED channels are operating. It is whether the manufacturer has engineered their interaction well enough to maintain an accurate white point, good spectral quality and consistent camera rendering.

This is where the difference between a basic LED fixture and a properly engineered professional light becomes visible.

With fixtures such as Maxima Rapida, Maxima Spectra and Maxima Furiosa, the purpose of the bi-colour system is precisely to allow the photographer or cinematographer to choose the colour temperature required by the scene rather than work only at a handful of predetermined values.

Why does spectral quality matter when using a ColorChecker?

A ColorChecker can help compensate for colour differences the camera actually recorded. It cannot recreate spectral information that never reached the sensor.

This distinction is fundamental.

Suppose a low-quality LED produces very little energy in a wavelength required to render a particular red fabric correctly. The camera cannot record colour information that was never present in the illuminating light.

A profile may improve the appearance of that red, but it cannot magically reconstruct the complete material response that would have existed under a spectrally richer source.

This is one reason professional production lighting places so much emphasis on spectral quality rather than simply on whether a fixture visually appears white.

A ColorChecker should therefore be viewed as a precision and consistency tool, not as a way to compensate for fundamentally poor lighting.

Why do CRI and TLCI still matter if you are using a ColorChecker?

Because calibration works best when the original light is already good.

CRI and TLCI give useful indications of how a source reproduces colour before any calibration is applied.

CRI evaluates colour rendering relative to a reference illuminant, while TLCI is designed specifically around camera imaging systems.

Neither metric completely describes a fixture on its own, but together with spectral measurements and real camera tests they provide a valuable indication of how much colour correction may be necessary.

A high-quality source reduces the amount of correction the ColorChecker workflow needs to perform in the first place.

This becomes particularly important for:

• skin tones
• fashion and textiles
• cosmetics
• food photography
• product colours
• paint and automotive finishes
• multi-camera productions

Can two bi-colour fixtures both set to 4,300K produce different ColorChecker results?

Yes.

Kelvin describes the overall appearance of white along a warm-to-cool axis. It does not completely describe the spectrum of the light.

Two fixtures can therefore both produce a nominal 4,300K white point while using different LED technologies and different spectral distributions.

The camera may render certain colours differently under each source, even though both lights appear neutral to the eye.

This is exactly the kind of difference a ColorChecker helps reveal.

If multiple fixtures are being used for a colour-critical commercial or fashion production, capturing references under the different sources can be very useful, particularly when combining fixtures from different manufacturers or different generations of technology.

What should you do when shooting a ColorChecker under mixed lighting?

Mixed lighting requires a slightly different approach because there may no longer be a single objectively correct white balance for the entire scene.

Imagine a subject illuminated by a 4,300K artificial key while receiving cooler daylight from a window and a warm practical in the background.

That colour contrast may be intentional.

In this situation, place the ColorChecker where the subject is and allow it to receive the lighting contribution that is relevant to the subject.

The chart then provides a reference for the dominant photographic lighting environment rather than attempting to mathematically neutralise every light source visible in the scene.

If different areas of the set are deliberately illuminated by very different sources, additional chart references can be captured when useful.

The goal is to document the creative lighting design, not eliminate it.

How can ColorChecker calibration help multi-camera productions?

This is one of its most valuable applications.

Different camera brands, sensor generations and colour-science pipelines can interpret the same lighting source differently.

If Camera A and Camera B both record the same ColorChecker under the same light, the colourist receives a common reference against which both cameras can be compared.

That does not make two fundamentally different cameras identical, but it gives post-production a much more objective starting point for matching them.

The process becomes particularly useful when combining cinema cameras with mirrorless bodies, drones or specialist cameras in the same production.

Using a consistent professional lighting source reduces the number of variables even further.

How does a daylight-only fixture change the calibration workflow?

A daylight-only fixture simplifies one variable because its white point is fixed.

This does not automatically make it better than bi-colour lighting, but it can be an advantage in a colour-critical environment where the production is deliberately built around one daylight reference.

The Maxima 6, for example, takes a different approach from Rapida, Spectra and Furiosa. Rather than offering adjustable white, it is designed around a dedicated daylight output.

This allows the fixture to be optimised specifically around that single daylight spectrum.

For studio photography, reproduction work, product photography or productions where the lighting environment is deliberately locked to daylight, a specialised daylight-only source can therefore be extremely attractive.

You give up the ability to electronically shift between tungsten and daylight, but you gain the simplicity of a fixture engineered around one defined white point.

The Maxima 3 similarly represents the more focused daylight-oriented side of the Maxima family, while the newer bi-colour fixtures address productions where changing environmental conditions demand greater flexibility.

Bi-colour flexibility or daylight-only precision?

Neither architecture is universally superior.

The choice depends on the production.

If your lighting environment changes regularly, bi-colour fixtures such as Maxima Rapida, Maxima Spectra and Maxima Furiosa allow the lighting crew to adapt quickly without adding correction gels.

If the production is deliberately standardised around daylight and you do not need to change colour temperature, a dedicated fixture such as Maxima 6 offers a highly focused solution.

A ColorChecker works with either approach.

With a fixed daylight fixture, the reference documents a stable daylight environment. With bi-colour lighting, the reference documents the particular colour temperature you selected for that setup.

In both cases, the principle is identical: measure the conditions you actually used.

How Maxima approaches colour-critical lighting

At Maxima LED, colour quality has always been a central part of the fixture design rather than an additional specification added at the end of development.

The Maxima range provides several different ways of approaching colour-critical work.

Maxima Rapida is designed as the rugged, extremely portable bi-colour location tool. Its 2,600K to 6,800K range allows the fixture to adapt quickly to changing environments, while its IP54 protection makes it particularly suited to outdoor production involving dust, moisture and unpredictable weather.

Maxima Spectra offers the same broad 2,600K to 6,800K philosophy in an exceptionally compact body, with a built-in colour touchscreen that makes CCT and output adjustments immediately accessible on the fixture.

Maxima Furiosa brings that adjustable-white philosophy into a larger professional lighting platform designed for demanding cinematography and photography applications where output and shaping flexibility are critical.

Maxima 6 represents another philosophy entirely: a highly specialised daylight source for productions where adjustable colour temperature is unnecessary and the priority is optimising performance around a fixed daylight white point.

Maxima 3 extends that compact daylight approach into an even smaller professional fixture.

Across the range, Maxima fixtures are designed around demanding professional colour reproduction, including a 98.6 CRI and 100 TLCI colour-quality standard.

Which Maxima light makes the most sense for ColorChecker-based workflows?

It depends on why you are calibrating.

• Maxima Spectra: ideal when portability, fast CCT adjustment and a clear onboard interface are priorities.
• Maxima Rapida: particularly well suited to colour-critical location work where environmental protection and rapid deployment matter.
• Maxima Furiosa: suited to more demanding cinema and professional production setups requiring a powerful adjustable-white source.
• Maxima 6: particularly interesting when the studio or production is standardised around daylight and the flexibility of bi-colour is unnecessary.
• Maxima 3: a compact daylight solution for smaller setups where a dedicated daylight source fits the workflow.

The ColorChecker procedure itself remains almost identical regardless of which fixture is being used.

What changes is the lighting strategy around it.

A practical ColorChecker workflow with bi-colour LED lighting

A simple, repeatable workflow can look like this:

1. Build the lighting setup first. Set your fixture position, modifier, output and CCT.
2. Choose and lock camera white balance. This can be technically neutral or intentionally creative.
3. Place the ColorChecker where the subject will be. It should receive representative illumination.
4. Check for reflections. Reposition the chart slightly if specular glare is contaminating individual patches.
5. Expose the chart correctly. Avoid clipping bright patches or burying dark patches in noise.
6. Record several clean frames. Still photographers should capture RAW whenever possible; video productions should record the chart in the same codec and colour pipeline as the scene.
7. Remove the chart and shoot the scene without changing the lighting.
8. Capture a new reference after significant lighting changes.
9. Label or organise the chart shots clearly. Post-production needs to know which reference belongs to which setup.

How do you use the ColorChecker reference in post-production?

The exact workflow depends on whether you are shooting photography or cinema.

For still photography, applications such as Lightroom, Capture One or dedicated ColorChecker profiling software can use the chart to establish a neutral reference or create a camera profile for the specific shooting conditions.

For video and cinema, the chart can be used manually with scopes or, depending on the software and chart, through dedicated colour-match tools in applications such as DaVinci Resolve.

Automated tools can be useful, but they should not replace visual judgement.

A cinematographer may have intentionally created a warmer key, cooler shadows or a mixed-light environment. Automatically forcing every patch toward textbook neutrality can destroy the lighting design.

The ColorChecker should therefore be treated as an objective reference from which the colourist can work, not as an instruction that every image must be made neutral.

Can a ColorChecker compensate for a bad LED light?

Only to a point.

A ColorChecker can help identify and correct systematic colour biases that the camera successfully recorded.

It cannot restore wavelengths that were absent from the illumination in the first place.

This is perhaps the most important principle in the entire workflow.

Good calibration starts with good light.

The better the spectral quality and consistency of the source, the more useful and predictable the ColorChecker reference becomes.

For that reason, choosing a professional fixture and using a ColorChecker should not be seen as alternative solutions. They work together.

The light creates the colour information. The camera records it. The ColorChecker provides an objective reference. And the colourist uses that reference to preserve or deliberately transform the image.

The takeaway: calibrate the actual lighting setup, not the specification sheet

The most important rule when using a ColorChecker with bi-colour lighting is simple: calibrate the conditions you are actually shooting.

If the fixture is at 4,300K, shoot the chart at 4,300K.

If you move to 5,600K, capture a new reference when colour accuracy matters.

If daylight becomes part of the scene, let the chart record that environment.

If you deliberately separate the camera white balance from the fixture’s Kelvin setting, keep that creative decision and record a reference for it.

Professional bi-colour lighting is valuable precisely because it gives the cinematographer or photographer the freedom to choose the right white point for the scene. A ColorChecker does not restrict that freedom. It simply gives post-production an accurate map of what you created.

If you want to explore different approaches to colour-critical professional lighting, discover Maxima Rapida, Maxima Spectra, Maxima Furiosa, Maxima 6 and Maxima 3, or talk with a Maxima specialist about the most appropriate fixture for your workflow.

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