H2H ROUND‐5: Color & Exposure Consistency...The first session was simply concerned with color and...
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1/20/13 Color & Exposure Consistency - Head-2-Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro-8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S www.h2hreviews.com/article/Lighting-H2H-Profoto-Pro-8a-2400-Air-vs-Broncolor-Scoro-A4S/Color-Exposure-Consistency.html 1/5 Top Reviews>> Search [email protected] Electric Power Scooters theSCOOTERstore.com Looking for an Electric Scooter for Yourself or a Loved One? HEAD‐2‐HEAD REVIEWS BETA Head‐2‐Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro‐8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S Color & Exposure Consistency By Ted Dillard JUMP TO: Design & Layout The final piece of the puzzle is the accuracy and consistency of color and exposure, from flash to flash, but also from head to head and from channel to channel. In an ideal world we’d like every system to be perfectly balanced for 5500K, daylight, and we’d like every exposure to be exactly that. Our expectations here are very high, considering the price and claims of these two systems, and the evaluations are concentrating on real‐world results, that is, what you’re going to see when you shoot. This segment of the testing is a bottomless pit of variables, but we’re trying to distill the results down to some conclusions that are relevant. Here’s how we ran the tests. The first session was simply concerned with color and exposure consistency from shot to shot from a range of full power to minimum power. We shot a series of pops at full, half and minimum, and compared the exposures within each series. We then compared color and exposure from head to head, and from channel to channel. To give us a baseline color balance, we used Adobe Camera RAW to set the white balance of all the exposures to 5500K, allowing us to evaluate both how far off the systems are from that point and how much they differ between shooting modes. That piece of the story is probably the most interesting from the start. Here are shots of the ColorChecker from the two systems, and in the case of the Broncolor, with both Color Controls on and off. It’s not pretty. For the price of these systems, we’d expect to see temperatures a lot closer to 5500K. The first sample below is the Profoto, and it’s running a color temperature of around 4650K. The second sample is the Broncolor, running at minimum also, but with the Color Control turned on. It also is a little off, but close, at around posted on Nov 23, 2009 at 7:25PM H2H ROUND‐5: Color & Exposure Consistency H2H USER SCORE Profoto Pro‐8a 2400 Air Broncolor Scoro A4S View Official Scorecard H2H Micro 4/3 Lens Review: Olympus vs. H2H: RAW Workflow Keyboards | Home | Reviews | Products | News | Pro Imaging Blog | Subscribe
Transcript of H2H ROUND‐5: Color & Exposure Consistency...The first session was simply concerned with color and...
1/20/13 Color & Exposure Consistency - Head-2-Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro-8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S
www.h2hreviews.com/article/Lighting-H2H-Profoto-Pro-8a-2400-Air-vs-Broncolor-Scoro-A4S/Color-Exposure-Consistency.html 1/5
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Head‐2‐Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro‐8a 2400 Air vs. BroncolorScoro A4SColor & Exposure ConsistencyBy Ted Dillard JUMP TO:
Design & Layout
The final piece of the puzzle is the accuracy and consistency of color andexposure, from flash to flash, but also from head to head and from channel tochannel. In an ideal world we’d like every system to be perfectly balanced for5500K, daylight, and we’d like every exposure to be exactly that. Ourexpectations here are very high, considering the price and claims of these twosystems, and the evaluations are concentrating on real‐world results, that is, whatyou’re going to see when you shoot.
This segment of the testing is a bottomless pit of variables, but we’re trying todistill the results down to some conclusions that are relevant. Here’s how we ran
the tests. The first session was simply concerned with color and exposure consistency fromshot to shot from a range of full power to minimum power. We shot a series ofpops at full, half and minimum, and compared the exposures within each series.We then compared color and exposure from head to head, and from channel tochannel. To give us a baseline color balance, we used Adobe Camera RAW to setthe white balance of all the exposures to 5500K, allowing us to evaluate both howfar off the systems are from that point and how much they differ betweenshooting modes. That piece of the story is probably the most interesting from the start. Here areshots of the ColorChecker from the two systems, and in the case of the Broncolor,with both Color Controls on and off. It’s not pretty. For the price of thesesystems, we’d expect to see temperatures a lot closer to 5500K. The first sample below is the Profoto, and it’s running a color temperature ofaround 4650K. The second sample is the Broncolor, running at minimum also, butwith the Color Control turned on. It also is a little off, but close, at around
posted on Nov 23, 2009 at 7:25PM
H2H ROUND‐5: Color & Exposure ConsistencyH2H USER SCORE
Profoto Pro‐8a 2400 Air Broncolor Scoro A4SView Official Scorecard
H2H Micro 4/3 Lens Review: Olympus vs. H2H: RAW Workflow Keyboards
| Home | Reviews | Products | News | Pro Imaging Blog | Subscribe
1/20/13 Color & Exposure Consistency - Head-2-Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro-8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S
www.h2hreviews.com/article/Lighting-H2H-Profoto-Pro-8a-2400-Air-vs-Broncolor-Scoro-A4S/Color-Exposure-Consistency.html 2/5
with the Color Control turned on. It also is a little off, but close, at around4600K. The last shot is the Broncolor system with the Color Control system de‐activated, to allow the absolute minimum duration. It’s pretty cool, at around5850K.
Profoto ~ 4650K
Broncolor CC On ~ 4600K
1/20/13 Color & Exposure Consistency - Head-2-Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro-8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S
www.h2hreviews.com/article/Lighting-H2H-Profoto-Pro-8a-2400-Air-vs-Broncolor-Scoro-A4S/Color-Exposure-Consistency.html 3/5
Broncolor CC Off ~ 5850K
Even without Color Management, in your web browser, the differences arevisible. Although all of the files are able to be corrected to neutral using ACR, theway that colors are mapped from the original captures is very much dependent onthe spectrum of the light source. That is to say, if your light source is skewed toone end of the spectrum or another, it will affect how the colors get plotted tothe full spectrum. Again, this is not a particularly bad result, it’s more that wehave high expectations from systems at this level. Here’s what the Imatest plots look like, comparing the Broncolor with CC on, andthen off.
CC On CC Off
Let’s look at it a little differently, using ColorThink software, to see how thecolors are plotted between the two in the Adobe RGB color space.
1/20/13 Color & Exposure Consistency - Head-2-Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro-8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S
www.h2hreviews.com/article/Lighting-H2H-Profoto-Pro-8a-2400-Air-vs-Broncolor-Scoro-A4S/Color-Exposure-Consistency.html 4/5
Broncolor ‐ CC on
Broncolor ‐ CC off (at minimum duration)
You’re seeing a very different distribution of colors, especially in the very centerof the space. The significance here is that, although you can correct the color
from the cooler, un‐corrected minimum duration of the Broncolor lights, it wouldbe better if you didn’t have to. The color and exposure consistency from flash to flash, head to head and channelto channel gives us some fairly remarkable results, but does not give us much toobserve. The most impressive results are from the Broncolor system at full andhalf‐power, giving measurements that are only points off from shot to shot. Hereare the worst results, measured in ACR, at 3200Ws:
and then at 1600Ws:
The Broncolor also gives us the worst performance, not surprisingly at minimumduration with the Color Control off. Not only is there a serious hit from oneexposure to another, but there’s a different spread between channels ‐ the reddrops 4 points, the green 7, and the blue drops a whopping 9.
1/20/13 Color & Exposure Consistency - Head-2-Head Lighting Review: Profoto Pro-8a 2400 Air vs. Broncolor Scoro A4S
www.h2hreviews.com/article/Lighting-H2H-Profoto-Pro-8a-2400-Air-vs-Broncolor-Scoro-A4S/Color-Exposure-Consistency.html 5/5
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The worst results from the Profoto were at 1200WS ‐ a shift of all channels downabout 3 points.
There is variation from head to head and from channel to channel, but not morethan what we’re seeing just from flash to flash, making it pretty difficult to cometo any conclusions about where any variations are coming from. Here’s what we’re taking from this. The Broncolor system has remarkableperformance within one small piece of the test range, in this case, ironically, atthe highest power. It holds the place of both the highest accuracy andconsistency, and the lowest when shot with the Color Control turned off. TheProfoto system has a fairly consistent margin of error throughout its power range.It’s interesting that these conclusions run parallel to what we saw in the durationtesting. One system, the Broncolor, is quite remarkable within some fairly narrowparameters, and the other, the Profoto, has a more generalized, more consistentperformance throughout its working range.
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