Thank you for this video Keith. I am picking up one of these lamps for my print space. I was worried about the base getting in the way because my desk is 30"x72". Big desk, but it will hold my Pro-1100, 15" MacBook Air, Asus ProArt 27" display and a 24"x36" cutting mat. so not too much space left. It's nice to know the desk clamp is included and it will take up minimal space. Be well! Daniel
thanks, great fun. i have always enjoyed how eyes adjust to color. the influence of strong colors within your view, head movement reseting white balance, these are exciting things. i had a color video camera in the desert at sunset, everything was orange, i had a big white card, i adjusted the dials watching the meter, and i looked at my monitor and sure enough the white card was perfectly white. i look back in the real world and my white card like everything else in view was the deep orange of desert sunset.
Thanks for posting this informative review. This light looks like a very useful piece of kit, and I would've never heard about it but for your video. It's good to see affordable colour management equipment becoming available. Back when I started looking at this in the early 2000s, only expensive professional equipment was available.
Are you still using this light over a year later and if not what have you changed to and why? I’m reasonably keen to pick one of these up but interested in long term reviews
Yes, it sits on top of the hood of one of my monitors for occasional use Lights the desk really clearly without shining on the screen. I have a full adjustable viewing cabinet for proper print viewing - but this is a lot better for quick viewing/testing without walking across the office!
Hello Keith, I have seen on Amazon many inexpensive color lamps lights with temperature settings for as low as $50 in USA, it would make sense just buying 2 of those for a just $100 and they will even illuminate a larger prints for viewing , they do not always specifically state that they are for viewing prints but as I said they have color temperature settings more or less 2700- to 5700k for example and depending on the features of a certain brands , however my question is are they going to do the same job as the Ilford one or is ilford specifically engineered for this particular application? thank you as always !
Yes - In some ways I actually prefer the original ott-lite as a desktop lamp. No specific colour control at all. As to the cheaper ones it's difficult to know without testing just how good they are - but you can be sure that there will be cheaper 'versions' of the ilford one out there
Hi Keith. Making more prints has been one of the goals I've set for myself this year. Your videos have been really helpful, so thank you very much for sharing your knowledge! I have a question that you may have covered in a previous video that I haven't seen yet. Should I be converting my files to Adobe RGB in Photoshop and setting the BenQ monitor to RGB mode too? My printer is the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 and my monitor is the BenQ SW270C. I've hardware-calibrated the monitor using a SpyderX. My first test print (from your downloads) directly from Photoshop using the relevant paper ICC profile had a magenta cast to it. Clearly, something I did wrong and not the printer or monitor. I then printed using Canon's software plug-in for Photoshop and things were much better, but still a little dark. The room I edit in and view prints is probably not optimal, so I'm going to look into ways of fixing that. Maybe this light will help.
The Canon software shows stuff is working, but I don't know about the colour cast. What do you mean by 'converting'? At what stage would you do this. and in what software? I calibrate my monitors to their native [i.e. largest] colour space.
@@KeithCooper Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the lack of clarity. I'm still a bit confused with some terminology. The test image I downloaded from your website and opened in Photoshop has an sRGB profile embedded. My BenQ monitor has a puck that I can use to switch between sRGB and Adobe RGB modes (I presume yours can also do this). In Photoshop you can change colour profiles. So, do I need to switch an image's colour profile from sRGB to Adobe RGB when editing an image in Photoshop that I want to print? Do I also need to use the puck to switch the monitor to Adobe RGB mode?
None of the above :-) The Datacolor test image is A98 - open as is - you do not need to change the monitor at all - that feature is for very specific uses. See my written BenQ reviews - most people will have no use for switching the monitor
Also, if you've not checked, do check any written articles listed or referenced - the videos are always secondary to any related written work@@StephanJarvis
Is it right that: If I know the color temperature of the light where my photo is presented, then I could use such a lamp to see in advance how my print will look in that room later?
Well, if [and it's a big if] it was only colour temperature which mattered, then yes, if the viewing lighting could be adjusted correctly, it would give a better impression. However, it's still only an impression and with a light like this, you've got the room around you when looking at the print under the light. Add in mixed lighting and daylight at the eventual location, maybe with some UV and the whole thing becomes much less predictable. In the past when I've created large prints which I knew were going to be viewed in certain conditions, I've used a spectrophotometer to capture the full spectrum of the light and use that to make a custom ICC printer profile. Now, this was due to fluorescent lighting [a commercial location] a few years ago. I've not been back to the location, but I suspect it's long changed to LED lighting making my profile work rather pointless. Then again I don't even know if the picture is still up [a very big panoramic print]
Very interesting. Thank you. But I do not get why you use a different Kelvin setting for your calibration for printing and for editing. Shouldn't it always match your room lighting? Why should I calibrate to 6500K for the editing and then for the printing to 5000K when the room light is the same?
Good point. The key is appreciating how our visual 'white balance' works with differing light levels. I use 6500K for general work, and the room colour temperature is what it is - but - the light levels and illumination are dim enough that my screen effectively sets white on the screen as my white when I'm sitting in front of it [a monitor hood really helps]. I'm not going to the trouble, expense and discomfort of working in a room with D50 lighting, grey walls and grey furniture ;-) In general use I simply don't ever bother having the monitor set at other colour temperatures. I find 5000K too warm for my liking. My main viewing light is actually around D50, yet I still do most work at 6500K [when not? - recently 5500K working with some images for a particular client - I'm not entirely convinced it was worth the pfaffing around ;-) ] See details of the view stand at: www.northlight-images.co.uk/pdv-3e-desktop-viewing-stand-review/ [this reminds me that I need to do a video about this - the article is from 2009] Matching colour temp is perhaps less important than matching brightness. That's where turning your head to do a comparison makes a big difference. One thing I'd note is that my approach would be considered far too imprecise for setting up a commercial design/print studio for pre-press etc ;-) Mine does work though... ;-)
@@KeithCooper thanks for the fast and detailed answer. Appreciate it. Ok a lens hood is nice. Sadly I don't have one. When I edit in the evening with a warm light turned on, colors often look very blueish on 6500K. Especially when I am printing. The color of your lamps is around 4000K and when you edit in 6400k, don't the prints come out very warm? Because screen looks really blue in the room with warm light and you might wanna do a warm white balance?
The 4000K lighting is entirely for the video - I don't use either of the machines in the video for actual work. You can make a monitor hood quite easily with dark art board But no, the 6500 does not look blue - remember the bit I said about relative brightnesses. If I stand across the room then yes, the 6500K screen might look blue, but of course I don't edit prints or evaluate them from across the room ;-)
Hi and thank you for the video. Question I could not solve looking at the official material: do you know what is the cd/m2 of the four brightness levels of the lamp? Should I match this with the monitor brightness’ calibration? Thank you
I've got perhaps a strange question - can you angle the lamp out towards the you - the viewer? I ask as I'm interested in buying such a lamp to help with print evaluation, and also to use to provide a little fill light for video conferencing. If it can angle outwards, whilst. clearly not perfect, it might surfice, and prevent me needing to buy and find space for two lamps!
@@KeithCooper cheers. I had researched this lamp previously but had struggled to find a UK seller - I see your show notes lists one in Leicester just down the road so I'll give it some consideration. Thanks again.
Yes, intentionally to try and show changes of colour temperature of the light. with respect to the environment. This was a while ago, but the camera would not have had auto WB set. I still find the technical aspects of making videos a bit of a pain - but that's partly because I don't personally like video as a medium at all - I started making videos relatively recently at the behest of Canon UK ;-) I'm a photographer, first, a writer second, with video ranking well down my skills list, in the vicinity of my cooking and piano playing ;-)
@@KeithCooper you left out being an oracle of sorts in the printing world. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on using the GFX as a video camera .… sing us a somg mr piano man!
@@KeithCooper 12-bit raw over HDMI. The 100 models at least do. God grants you video instead of those luscious Hasselblad colors . Its all about tradeoffs isn’t it
Nice to see they're honest in showing the CRI levels for different colors, but it's disappointing to see only 69 for blue and 83 for red at 6500K. Some colors are 98 and 99 in comparison. Hopefully, blues and reds can be increased in the future, but LEDs have been out for years now, and I haven't seen anything higher than 95. CRI 94 sounds good for this lamp, but many don't know that blues and reds are seriously dipped. These numbers look better than some of the graphs I've seen online, where reds severely lacking. Some are using LED lights to digitize slide film with a digital camera. LED technology doesn't seem to be up to the task yet.
Ah - those are _not CRI_ numbers - _this is very important_ See the linked articles especially the one about using the i1Pro to create this sort of data. LED technology is more than up to the task - it's just how complex you want to make the LED array - there are UV and IR LEDs which can be added for example
@@KeithCooper I was thinking of the CRI charts for single bulbs, which showed serious drops in reds. *So this lamp uses a combination of bulbs to achieve this result, mixing and matching?* For assessing prints, I would prefer a light that rendered reds and blues more accurately, and if this is the best that can be achieved, I don't see how it's good enough to backlight a color slide that's being photographed to archive one's collection digitally.
Yes, this is a mixed LED device (I don't know how many though) The R numbers are a much better way of estimating performance - this light source is actually quite a good one for the simplicity of the device. The question of it's use with respect to scanning is potentially much more complex, since it's a combination of the spectral aspect of the light sources, the spectral aspects of the dyes and the response curve of the camera system Doing that is a very different job to a light to visual inspection and that's before we get into the eclectic colour rendition of some slide films ;-)
@@KeithCooper Interesting to learn that. Thanks! So they actually dye some LED elements, like for especially red, it seems, because LED graphs show a single bulb having difficulty producing reds. I would imagine that they would need a stronger bulb/element than the others if they would dye an element red, to get enough output. That would make a complicated electrical circuit, powering different strength elements, I would think. It's surprising to me that blue is so low in this light, because the graphs I've seen show that blue is spiked in LEDs, including in your article: "Lighting CRI with i1Profiler and the i1Pro."
@@mattquinn-caledoniantelevi2522 I appreciate the explanation. So different chemicals produce different colors in the diodes. They don't coat the diodes with colors, but you did say blue is coated with phosphorous "to absorb some of the blue light and 'convert it' by fluorescing in the yellow/green band." Keith is definitely about being practical, and not getting too technical, maybe so we get things done, and don't obsess with details that don't matter. I have used German made fluorescent lights to assess my prints, but I knew the lights had weaknesses, so I knew they couldn't be trusted. It does bother me that this high end LED light still takes a 30% hit in blues and 15% in reds. 30% reduction in blues could lead to photographers into thinking their blues aren't rich enough, and then end up saturating them too much. Blues are often a big part of landscape photos: sky, water, etc.. And blue is my favorite color. What about LED lights used to light prints in galleries and homes? Are they weak in blue and red too? At least halogens lit prints uniformly (I've been told); even though, the color temp was low. Interesting how Keith explains the human eye adjusts for white balance. I do appreciate Ilford being honest about these numbers, so if we think blues in a print aren't happening, we could look at the print under sunlight instead, to make sure. My main concern would be for those whom I've seen archiving their color slides backlit by LED lights, thinking they're getting accurate color. If the light panel has this much reduction in blues and reds, the manufacturer should say this, and recommend how to compensate for this when processing the image in software. But they probably won't, because the main thing is to sell as many units as possible. That's why I find it refreshing that Ilford was honest about their light's weaknesses, which would make me more likely to use it than those who don't disclose this info.
Thank you for this video Keith. I am picking up one of these lamps for my print space. I was worried about the base getting in the way because my desk is 30"x72". Big desk, but it will hold my Pro-1100, 15" MacBook Air, Asus ProArt 27" display and a 24"x36" cutting mat. so not too much space left. It's nice to know the desk clamp is included and it will take up minimal space.
Be well!
Daniel
Thanks - this one still lives over my main desk
thanks, great fun. i have always enjoyed how eyes adjust to color. the influence of strong colors within your view, head movement reseting white balance, these are exciting things. i had a color video camera in the desert at sunset, everything was orange, i had a big white card, i adjusted the dials watching the meter, and i looked at my monitor and sure enough the white card was perfectly white. i look back in the real world and my white card like everything else in view was the deep orange of desert sunset.
Thanks - I was pleased the video showed the effect s quite well
Thanks for posting this informative review. This light looks like a very useful piece of kit, and I would've never heard about it but for your video.
It's good to see affordable colour management equipment becoming available. Back when I started looking at this in the early 2000s, only expensive professional equipment was available.
Thanks - this one looks relatively good for the quality of the light. It's more adaptable than the full viewing stand I have.
Thanks for sharing your in-depth knowledge about viewing prints under different temperature lights.
Thanks - glad it was og interest.
Excellent explanation and review - thanks.
Thanks - glad it worked ;-)
Are you still using this light over a year later and if not what have you changed to and why? I’m reasonably keen to pick one of these up but interested in long term reviews
Yes, it sits on top of the hood of one of my monitors for occasional use
Lights the desk really clearly without shining on the screen.
I have a full adjustable viewing cabinet for proper print viewing - but this is a lot better for quick viewing/testing without walking across the office!
Hello Keith, I have seen on Amazon many inexpensive color lamps lights with temperature settings for as low as $50 in USA, it would make sense just buying 2 of those for a just $100 and they will even illuminate a larger prints for viewing , they do not always specifically state that they are for viewing prints but as I said they have color temperature settings more or less 2700- to 5700k for example and depending on the features of a certain brands , however my question is are they going to do the same job as the Ilford one or is ilford specifically engineered for this particular application? thank you as always !
Yes - In some ways I actually prefer the original ott-lite as a desktop lamp. No specific colour control at all.
As to the cheaper ones it's difficult to know without testing just how good they are - but you can be sure that there will be cheaper 'versions' of the ilford one out there
Very interesting. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it
Hi Keith. Making more prints has been one of the goals I've set for myself this year. Your videos have been really helpful, so thank you very much for sharing your knowledge! I have a question that you may have covered in a previous video that I haven't seen yet. Should I be converting my files to Adobe RGB in Photoshop and setting the BenQ monitor to RGB mode too? My printer is the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 and my monitor is the BenQ SW270C. I've hardware-calibrated the monitor using a SpyderX. My first test print (from your downloads) directly from Photoshop using the relevant paper ICC profile had a magenta cast to it. Clearly, something I did wrong and not the printer or monitor. I then printed using Canon's software plug-in for Photoshop and things were much better, but still a little dark. The room I edit in and view prints is probably not optimal, so I'm going to look into ways of fixing that. Maybe this light will help.
The Canon software shows stuff is working, but I don't know about the colour cast.
What do you mean by 'converting'? At what stage would you do this. and in what software?
I calibrate my monitors to their native [i.e. largest] colour space.
@@KeithCooper Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the lack of clarity. I'm still a bit confused with some terminology. The test image I downloaded from your website and opened in Photoshop has an sRGB profile embedded. My BenQ monitor has a puck that I can use to switch between sRGB and Adobe RGB modes (I presume yours can also do this). In Photoshop you can change colour profiles. So, do I need to switch an image's colour profile from sRGB to Adobe RGB when editing an image in Photoshop that I want to print? Do I also need to use the puck to switch the monitor to Adobe RGB mode?
None of the above :-)
The Datacolor test image is A98 - open as is - you do not need to change the monitor at all - that feature is for very specific uses. See my written BenQ reviews - most people will have no use for switching the monitor
@@KeithCooper Good to know. Thanks! Will do some more tests this weekend and go through more of your videos. All the best.
Also, if you've not checked, do check any written articles listed or referenced - the videos are always secondary to any related written work@@StephanJarvis
Is it right that: If I know the color temperature of the light where my photo is presented, then I could use such a lamp to see in advance how my print will look in that room later?
Well, if [and it's a big if] it was only colour temperature which mattered, then yes, if the viewing lighting could be adjusted correctly, it would give a better impression.
However, it's still only an impression and with a light like this, you've got the room around you when looking at the print under the light.
Add in mixed lighting and daylight at the eventual location, maybe with some UV and the whole thing becomes much less predictable.
In the past when I've created large prints which I knew were going to be viewed in certain conditions, I've used a spectrophotometer to capture the full spectrum of the light and use that to make a custom ICC printer profile.
Now, this was due to fluorescent lighting [a commercial location] a few years ago. I've not been back to the location, but I suspect it's long changed to LED lighting making my profile work rather pointless. Then again I don't even know if the picture is still up [a very big panoramic print]
@@KeithCooper thanks for your explanation and I now understand the big if thing.
Hi Keith Thanks for the excellent info on the light.Is it safe to plug it directly into my MacBookPro 16 inch usb ports with an adapter?
Works fine on my MacBook Pro, but it's a 2010 one :-)
Should be no problem...
Very interesting. Thank you.
But I do not get why you use a different Kelvin setting for your calibration for printing and for editing. Shouldn't it always match your room lighting? Why should I calibrate to 6500K for the editing and then for the printing to 5000K when the room light is the same?
Good point. The key is appreciating how our visual 'white balance' works with differing light levels.
I use 6500K for general work, and the room colour temperature is what it is - but - the light levels and illumination are dim enough that my screen effectively sets white on the screen as my white when I'm sitting in front of it [a monitor hood really helps].
I'm not going to the trouble, expense and discomfort of working in a room with D50 lighting, grey walls and grey furniture ;-)
In general use I simply don't ever bother having the monitor set at other colour temperatures. I find 5000K too warm for my liking.
My main viewing light is actually around D50, yet I still do most work at 6500K
[when not? - recently 5500K working with some images for a particular client - I'm not entirely convinced it was worth the pfaffing around ;-) ]
See details of the view stand at:
www.northlight-images.co.uk/pdv-3e-desktop-viewing-stand-review/ [this reminds me that I need to do a video about this - the article is from 2009]
Matching colour temp is perhaps less important than matching brightness. That's where turning your head to do a comparison makes a big difference.
One thing I'd note is that my approach would be considered far too imprecise for setting up a commercial design/print studio for pre-press etc ;-)
Mine does work though... ;-)
@@KeithCooper thanks for the fast and detailed answer. Appreciate it.
Ok a lens hood is nice. Sadly I don't have one. When I edit in the evening with a warm light turned on, colors often look very blueish on 6500K. Especially when I am printing.
The color of your lamps is around 4000K and when you edit in 6400k, don't the prints come out very warm? Because screen looks really blue in the room with warm light and you might wanna do a warm white balance?
The 4000K lighting is entirely for the video - I don't use either of the machines in the video for actual work.
You can make a monitor hood quite easily with dark art board
But no, the 6500 does not look blue - remember the bit I said about relative brightnesses.
If I stand across the room then yes, the 6500K screen might look blue, but of course I don't edit prints or evaluate them from across the room ;-)
@@KeithCooper ok I see. Thanks for all those explanations.
Hi and thank you for the video. Question I could not solve looking at the official material: do you know what is the cd/m2 of the four brightness levels of the lamp? Should I match this with the monitor brightness’ calibration? Thank you
I've got perhaps a strange question - can you angle the lamp out towards the you - the viewer? I ask as I'm interested in buying such a lamp to help with print evaluation, and also to use to provide a little fill light for video conferencing. If it can angle outwards, whilst. clearly not perfect, it might surfice, and prevent me needing to buy and find space for two lamps!
Yes the lamp unit can be tilted upwards 90º from where I've got it in the video.
So in the video I could point to almost directly at the camera.
@@KeithCooper cheers. I had researched this lamp previously but had struggled to find a UK seller - I see your show notes lists one in Leicester just down the road so I'll give it some consideration. Thanks again.
I've got a short written review of the lamp to finish - I'll be sure to include some more detailed photos.
I also enjoy to watch this topic. Did you set manual whitebalance at 4200k in camera ? Regards Lars
Thanks
Yes the camera was set to 4200K - I fine tuned the white balance with the various ColorChecker cards when editing.
Interesting. Your cameras auto white balance kicked in on various occasions . Or was this done intentionally?
Yes, intentionally to try and show changes of colour temperature of the light. with respect to the environment.
This was a while ago, but the camera would not have had auto WB set.
I still find the technical aspects of making videos a bit of a pain - but that's partly because I don't personally like video as a medium at all - I started making videos relatively recently at the behest of Canon UK ;-) I'm a photographer, first, a writer second, with video ranking well down my skills list, in the vicinity of my cooking and piano playing ;-)
@@KeithCooper you left out being an oracle of sorts in the printing world. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on using the GFX as a video camera .… sing us a somg mr piano man!
The GFX does video?? ;-)
@@KeithCooper 12-bit raw over HDMI. The 100 models at least do. God grants you video instead of those luscious Hasselblad colors . Its all about tradeoffs isn’t it
Nice to see they're honest in showing the CRI levels for different colors, but it's disappointing to see only 69 for blue and 83 for red at 6500K. Some colors are 98 and 99 in comparison. Hopefully, blues and reds can be increased in the future, but LEDs have been out for years now, and I haven't seen anything higher than 95. CRI 94 sounds good for this lamp, but many don't know that blues and reds are seriously dipped.
These numbers look better than some of the graphs I've seen online, where reds severely lacking.
Some are using LED lights to digitize slide film with a digital camera. LED technology doesn't seem to be up to the task yet.
Ah - those are _not CRI_ numbers - _this is very important_
See the linked articles especially the one about using the i1Pro to create this sort of data.
LED technology is more than up to the task - it's just how complex you want to make the LED array - there are UV and IR LEDs which can be added for example
@@KeithCooper I was thinking of the CRI charts for single bulbs, which showed serious drops in reds. *So this lamp uses a combination of bulbs to achieve this result, mixing and matching?*
For assessing prints, I would prefer a light that rendered reds and blues more accurately, and if this is the best that can be achieved, I don't see how it's good enough to backlight a color slide that's being photographed to archive one's collection digitally.
Yes, this is a mixed LED device (I don't know how many though)
The R numbers are a much better way of estimating performance - this light source is actually quite a good one for the simplicity of the device.
The question of it's use with respect to scanning is potentially much more complex, since it's a combination of the spectral aspect of the light sources, the spectral aspects of the dyes and the response curve of the camera system
Doing that is a very different job to a light to visual inspection and that's before we get into the eclectic colour rendition of some slide films ;-)
@@KeithCooper Interesting to learn that. Thanks! So they actually dye some LED elements, like for especially red, it seems, because LED graphs show a single bulb having difficulty producing reds. I would imagine that they would need a stronger bulb/element than the others if they would dye an element red, to get enough output.
That would make a complicated electrical circuit, powering different strength elements, I would think.
It's surprising to me that blue is so low in this light, because the graphs I've seen show that blue is spiked in LEDs, including in your article: "Lighting CRI with i1Profiler and the i1Pro."
@@mattquinn-caledoniantelevi2522 I appreciate the explanation. So different chemicals produce different colors in the diodes. They don't coat the diodes with colors, but you did say blue is coated with phosphorous "to absorb some of the blue light and 'convert it' by fluorescing in the yellow/green band."
Keith is definitely about being practical, and not getting too technical, maybe so we get things done, and don't obsess with details that don't matter. I have used German made fluorescent lights to assess my prints, but I knew the lights had weaknesses, so I knew they couldn't be trusted.
It does bother me that this high end LED light still takes a 30% hit in blues and 15% in reds. 30% reduction in blues could lead to photographers into thinking their blues aren't rich enough, and then end up saturating them too much. Blues are often a big part of landscape photos: sky, water, etc.. And blue is my favorite color.
What about LED lights used to light prints in galleries and homes? Are they weak in blue and red too?
At least halogens lit prints uniformly (I've been told); even though, the color temp was low. Interesting how Keith explains the human eye adjusts for white balance.
I do appreciate Ilford being honest about these numbers, so if we think blues in a print aren't happening, we could look at the print under sunlight instead, to make sure.
My main concern would be for those whom I've seen archiving their color slides backlit by LED lights, thinking they're getting accurate color. If the light panel has this much reduction in blues and reds, the manufacturer should say this, and recommend how to compensate for this when processing the image in software.
But they probably won't, because the main thing is to sell as many units as possible.
That's why I find it refreshing that Ilford was honest about their light's weaknesses, which would make me more likely to use it than those who don't disclose this info.