Why is colour temperature so important?

People often don’t realise how much colour temperature matters, because they believe that if the colour is wrong then it can be adjusted on the computer.

But that simply isn’t true when you’re using more than one light because adjustments affect the whole image and can’t be set differently for different lights.

Using an example of a key light and a fill light again, if the key light at say full power produces a colour temperature of 5,700K and the fill light produces 5,000K then parts of the face will be correct and parts will look like an orange!

Most manufacturers (and resellers) of studio lighting publish colour temperature figures for their lights, but apart from Lencarta, none seem to produce detailed figures and it's clear from some of the figures published that the figures are very unlikely to be accurate and that they may not even have been tested by the sellers!

Lencarta is unusual – if not unique – in that we test and publish the actual colour temperature and flash energy figures of every one of our flash heads!

These figures are important because they are the only objective measurement of the real performance of the flash head.

 Our testing method involves taking 10 colour temperature readings and 10 flash energy readings at each main power setting, i.e. full, half, quarter, eighth etc The tests were carried out using the industry standard Minolta Color Temperature meter and the industry standard Minolta Flash meter.

 These tests were carried out at the Commercial Photography studio in Bradford. All of these figures can be verified – just call at the studio by arrangement and we’ll repeat the tests in your presence!

Generally, a colour temperature variation of up to 300 degrees Kelvin (300K) is acceptable and all Lencarta flash heads have far less variation than that! Starting with the colour temperature at the 'correct' setting on the far left, each of the photos below is 200K 'warmer' than the one on it's left. 

Of course, the term ‘correct’ really means ‘neutral’. A lot of photographers prefer the tones to be slightly warmer than ‘correct’ and so set the colour temperature to suit that preference.
The shot on the far left is 'correct' in that the colour balance matches the actual colour of the background.  But of course, choosing a warmer or colder colour is only possible if the lights can be relied upon to produce consistent colour in the first place.