How good is my camera at being a Color Meter?

[Scot Yount]

Hi all,
I hope this is not too stupid a question. but a friend of mine who shoots stills for automobile manufactures keeps telling me I need a color meter because there is no way my camera is accurate. I have a Helium Weapon and an old school Scarlet MX. Curious was to what people who are much more experienced than me have to say on this. How accurate are the color temp and tint readings on our cameras when you do a proper "white balance"? Does it matter if you are using a legacy color pipeline or IPP2?

 

[Michael Tiemann]

To my knowledge, color meters scan a wide range of narrow frequencies. There are many, many ways that a mere 3-color reading can give wrong answers to those questions.

 

[Misha Engel]

ColorChecker's work good enough for us and they get bigger by the day.

https://www.newsshooter.com/2018/06/16/xl-colorchecker-video-target-x-rite/

 

[Scot Yount]

I shoot a color checker too. But I am talking more about adjusting my lights, skypanels or Gemini for instance .

 

[Brandon Veen]

I shoot a color checker too. Bit I am talking more about adjusting my lights, skypanels or Gemini for instance .

For adjusting lights, I'd imagine that using a camera to try and figure what to set them to is going to be fairly futile.
Sure you could set them to 5600K, +/- 0.0, light a gray card, and see if it gets that reading off it when you white balance the camera, but I think you'll get fairly mixed results since clicking in one spot will tell you one thing, and clicking in another might tell you something completely different.

I think our RED's tend to do good enough for white balancing off lights without external assistance, but I wouldn't trust them as a way to adjust lights to a 100% accurate value.

 

[Misha Engel]

I shoot a color checker too. Bit I am talking more about adjusting my lights, skypanels or Gemini for instance .

We use the camera + our eyes + some experience for that.
A color or lightmeter gives a value and you still have to interpret those values.
It might be conveniant when you're with a big crew so that the light crew knows the values that you expect.

 

[Adrian Jebef]

If you want to get into the nitty gritty you'll need a proper colorimeter like the Sekonic C7000. Other meters don't tell the whole story. However you'll always be limited by the camera you use to record. Just because the meter sees it doesn't necessarily mean the camera will too. For onset use you'll need a proper HD-SDI signal out of the camera within a proper color-managed workflow (ie log out with transform LUT and other color transform stacks like CDL etc properly applied). You'll also need a proper color-calibrated Grade 1 display to view it all on. When done correctly you can most definitely use the camera feed as your base white balance and match your lights to it. A meter does help the process. This does produce superior results although experience and additional gear is usually required.