Show dictionary · Lighting
Color Temperature
Also: CCT · kelvin
Color temperature describes the warmth or coolness of nominally white light, in kelvin: roughly 3200 K for tungsten (warm amber-white) and 5600 K for daylight (cool blue-white). Lower is warmer, higher is cooler, a scale inherited from the physics of heated bodies.
In practice
On camera the number becomes non-negotiable: a camera white-balanced for 5600 K renders tungsten light orange, so mixed rigs get corrected with gel (CTB, CTO) or by dialing LED sources to match. IMAG shows live at the intersection: what looks fine to eyes in the room can be visibly mismatched on screen.
LED fixtures made color temperature a control channel rather than a purchase decision, with variable-white and full-color engines. The companion metric CRI (and TLCI for camera) grades how faithfully a source renders color at its stated temperature, and cheap LEDs are where that number goes to die.
How you’ll hear it
"Set the key light to 5600 to match the LED wall or her face goes orange on IMAG."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.