Sekonic Shows Their One-In-The-World Prototype Of The C700 Spectrometer

Have you ever had to balance LED lights? If you have, you know it is a nightmare. For once not all 6500K are created equal and even if all the LEDs on your setup are set to 6500K, they light output is slightly different. The other thing is that regardless of the color temperature, LED lights (and other pulsing lights, such as fluorescents) do not show a consistent light pattern.

This inconsistent light pattern means that a graph showing the color signature of an LED light may have spikes on certain colors. (have you ever heard on the horrible green spike?). Here is the thing though, (in general) the color meters that we currently have are not built to measure those color spikes, they assume that the signature is linear and sample the light color at wide intervals. Those wide intervals may cause the light meter to miss a spike (or a valley).

This is where the Sekonic C700 comes into play. We had a chat with Sekonic International sales director, Lorenzo Gasperini and he explained to us how the C700 is coping with those issues. There are some good news. Apparently, Sekonic rushed production and only had 2 of the C700 units produced, and even those were not guaranteed to be the final models. And there is nothing more exciting than putting your hands on a one of a kind unit :). And yes, the screen was stellar :)

Here are some of the highlight we got during the talk (in no particular order)

• The C700 samples the light at 1 nano meter intervals as opposed to the 10 nm that are currently in the market, making it almost impossible to miss a spike.
• It has a 4.3″ touch screen. YAY!
• One very interesting function is that you can ask the C700 for the Rosco (or LEE) Gel pack ID that will balance your light. This is one of the coolest features I’ve seen as it take a lot of the guess work out of color balancing.
• The C700 can display the CRI of a light source making it an indispensable tool to use when shopping for lights. I hope that this feature can explain the huge price diff when buying knock off Chinese LED  panels.
• There is a second version, The C700R, that can trigger PocketWizard connected strobes. (similar to other Sekonic products)
• should cost around $1,500 and be available for the holidays.