Strobe color temperature - Inon vs Ikelite

Ok, I've seen acouple of references here saying tht the Ike is a warmer strobe than the Inon. However, when I look at the Strobe Finder chart, I see that the Ike has a color temp of 4800K, while Inon is 5500k. The Inon appears to be warmer.

Well, wot gives? Am I missing something here?

Vandit

Well, wot gives? Am I missing something here?

 

Vandit

Not much. Just that photographers have the opposite idea of what's hot and cold from physicists. The strobe output temperature specification comes from the color of the light given off by an ideal black body at that temperture, the sun is one good example. As that object gets hot the light shifts from red to blue. Photographers for some reason think that blue light is cold and red light is warm.

yes many photographers tend to talk about "warm" and "cool" as the colour of the resulting photograph, rather than the actual temperature of the "heated black body" that lights it.

Probably stems from the fact that most photographers are influenced by the terms used in assessing colour bias in printed versions of their pics, where you might want to "warm it up a bit" to make in redder/yellower or "cool it down" to make it more cyan/blue.

Ok, I've seen acouple of references here saying tht the Ike is a warmer strobe than the Inon. However, when I look at the Strobe Finder chart, I see that the Ike has a color temp of 4800K, while Inon is 5500k. The Inon appears to be warmer.

 

Well, wot gives? Am I missing something here?

 

Vandit

Associating colours with temperatures (e.g. red is warm, blue is cool) has been used in art for years (centuries?), way before the physical concepts of colour (as expressed in ºK) was thought out. The confusing bit is that the way colours are associated with temperatures differs (they go in opposite directions) in the arts and physics contexts.

Gotcha - thanks for the clarification.

However, one further question - assuming that the Ikes are warmer strobes (based on black body radiation characteristics), that would mean that the light emanating from it would indeed be more blue- is that correct? So from a photography terminology, it would be a "cooler" light.

Thanks,

Vandit

Gotcha - thanks for the clarification.

 

However, one further question - assuming that the Ikes are warmer strobes (based on black body radiation characteristics), that would mean that the light emanating from it would indeed be more blue- is that correct? So from a photography terminology, it would be a "cooler" light.

 

Thanks,

Vandit

Just the opposite. Ike strobes have the lower color temperature, 4800K, of the two. It's more red.

Just in case you're not confused by the above, if you choose a color temperature white balance setting for your camera or raw converter, increasing the temperature will make your photo look more red. That's because the camera or software assumes that your light source is at that color temperature and compensates to give the "true" color for the subject.

Higher color temperature source -> more blue in the light -> photo is shifted to the red to compensate.

My apologies for ignoring a thread I had started - I was away from regular web access for a while.

Just the opposite. Ike strobes have the lower color temperature, 4800K, of the two. It's more red.

True, true... sorry, I was in a hurry when I thought through that, and mixed up the strobe temperature numbers, which threw off my thinking.

Makes sense that the strobe which emits the cooler light will require more warming - which affects the blues more.

One solution, incidentally, could be to process 2 image, with differing color temperatures - a cooler one for the water and a warmer one for the subject - and then merge them together. Of course, this would require shooting in RAW and is also far more work than ideal.

Yuzo's email just came in a few days ago, telling me that the Z-240s were in stock. I tend to prefer warmer-toned subjects myself, so now I am having some last minute second thoughts about whether or not to get the Inons after all, or to switch to Ike 125s. Decisions, decisions. If the Ike 125s are compatible with the Heinrichs board that has been installed on my Aquatica A20 housing, I may yet consider changing my order.

Vandit

I wouldn't get too hung up on color temperature in the digital age. Its easy to adjust white ballance to counteract color temperature and dial in what you like. Shooting RAW gives you a lot of lattitude here.

I wouldn't discount the importance of strobe colour temperature so quickly. When capturing a scene lit by two light sources, strobe and sunlight, if you change the WB of one, the other swings with it.

The practical upshot of this is that when you change the WB to get a neutral rendering of the flash lit subject at the RAW conversion stage, you affect the rendering of the blue water column. This means in simple terms that a "warmer" strobe (one with a lower colour temperature) will enable you to get a more saturated blue in the water column.

If you do use "colder" strobes (higher colour temp) you may well feel the need to add saturation to the blue water in post.

Martyn