How to check Kelvin value for a particular light?

I

IMMedia

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This may be a dumb question, but how would I determine the Kelvin value for a particular light? I know there are devices out there to determine the strength of lights, but the color?
 
Or finding a used on on Ebay because the Gossen ones for instance are super expensive in the $1300 range. They can be found on ebay for a 1/3 or that or so. Even though your white balance takes care of a lot of issues, it would be a great tool to have for many reasons!
 
wow.. the prices for those things! So I'm assuming there isn't a low grade one that doesn't have as good resolution but can give me an idea of the color temp. of a light.
 
None that I've ever seen and this has been a subject of interest to me where I tried to find a cheaper alternative. The only other equipment that I know about that's used to accurately measure color temperature or correlated color temperature is a spectroradiometer with an integrating sphere. Now there's an expensive piece of equipment and its primarily used by light bulb manufacturers to measure the parameters of their lights. It's not portable either. Takes up half a small room.
 
I really don't know why they didn't put this function in the DVX/HVX. All the shoulder mount eng cameras show you the Kelvin value when you white balance. Which is of course crucial to these cameras because you're looking at a b/w viewfinder.
I learned to shoot with a shoulder mount and because of that I really developed an eye for Kelvin values. Really helps me to determine quickly what kind of white balance and/or lamp correction I need when I enter a room (I'm not always right, of course, but I'd surely be much worse at this had I not shot in hundreds of lighting situations with the shoulder mount, learning the Kelvin values by heart)
 
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We covered this subject once before here and of course no one could say the real reason other than offering opinions. As I recall the consensus may have been that its more expensive hardware and thus was left out of the semi-pro cameras. Ultimately though Panasonic and Sony would need to answer that. Many people will develop an eye for kelvin values over time and will notice that the little changes (increments of 50 to see a difference) in lower color temperatures in the 3000 range are so noticeable, but in the higher ranges (4800 and above) they are a bit hard to see (increments of 150 is more typical before you see a difference).

A lot of that has to do with MIRED Shift and that's a whole other subject.
 
The XH-A1 obviously lets you white balance to a specific kelvin... but it doesn't read out the kelvin when it auto-balances. shame! but still- easy to turn the toggle wheel when on manual kelvin and see where abouts white is.
 
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