How important is spectrometer and lightmeter for digital cameras ?

[Ram Nanda]

How important is spectrometer and lightmeter for digital cameras ?

If we shoot in outdoor without any artificial lights, how important is spectrometer for betterment of image quality ?

In general, is it worth buying spectrometer and what are the cases in which we use them for movie production ?

[Aapo Lettinen]

generally speaking you only need spectrometer to balance different lights to each other and everything else is done in post nowadays (like correcting overall colour cast of a scene, rarely done with in-camera correction filters because overall corrections easy to apply in grading and the end result pretty much the same).

So you would need it if having different lights and you want to balance them against each other. For overall colour temperature differences the digital cameras with even a basic monitor offer enough tools to replace the separate colour meter and again, if you cannot affect the colour balance on set there is no need to know how off it is so only needed if you can alter it with lighting (for example if you have a green cast in forest scene and you are able to use artificial lighting to counter that)

Exposure/light meter is useful to quickly check contrast ratios and overall light levels but it is extremely rare to actually use it for setting aperture on a digital camera. Knowing how to use in-camera scopes is much more useful, the camera basically already is a exposure meter so a separate one is often useful only for checking overall light level (if there is enough light or not) or checking contrast ratios IF you have experience what different contrast ratios should look like (mostly film shooters have this kind of experience so it may not be practical for digital shooters unless wanting to learn it for fun)

[Anton Leo Felixberger]

On 7/7/2023 at 9:22 AM, aapo lettinen said:

generally speaking you only need spectrometer to balance different lights to each other and everything else is done in post nowadays (like correcting overall colour cast of a scene, rarely done with in-camera correction filters because overall corrections easy to apply in grading and the end result pretty much the same).

So you would need it if having different lights and you want to balance them against each other. For overall colour temperature differences the digital cameras with even a basic monitor offer enough tools to replace the separate colour meter and again, if you cannot affect the colour balance on set there is no need to know how off it is so only needed if you can alter it with lighting (for example if you have a green cast in forest scene and you are able to use artificial lighting to counter that)

Exposure/light meter is useful to quickly check contrast ratios and overall light levels but it is extremely rare to actually use it for setting aperture on a digital camera. Knowing how to use in-camera scopes is much more useful, the camera basically already is a exposure meter so a separate one is often useful only for checking overall light level (if there is enough light or not) or checking contrast ratios IF you have experience what different contrast ratios should look like (mostly film shooters have this kind of experience so it may not be practical for digital shooters unless wanting to learn it for fun)

Hello Aapo, out of curiosity: how would you work against the greencast for example in a forest? I've thought about this too and in theory I could imagine countering with Magenta artificial but is that really practical? Do you have any experience with that? Do you work with magenta in close ups to get the skin tones right? I shot in a forest a few weeks ago and the green worried me but I thought, okay let's finish this in post.

[Aapo Lettinen]

1 hour ago, Anton Leo Felixberger said:

Hello Aapo, out of curiosity: how would you work against the greencast for example in a forest? I've thought about this too and in theory I could imagine countering with Magenta artificial but is that really practical? Do you have any experience with that? Do you work with magenta in close ups to get the skin tones right? I shot in a forest a few weeks ago and the green worried me but I thought, okay let's finish this in post.

Normally I try to use negative fill (to remove green from directions it comes from the strongest like from green leaves the sun is hitting directly, or the green undergrowth like grass etc on the ground) and neutral fill / soft artificial light to counter it (from most suitable direction). This also helps to up the exposure a little --> stop down the lens so that the rest of the forest looks more moody (darker) . Sometimes it helps to use large neutral coloured stuff like molton or tarp on the ground under the actors when shooting mediums so that the green reflecting from grass etc. is taken away