Motion Picture and Video Lighting, 2nd Edition

THEORY AND CONTROL OF COLOR

The Nature of Light

Light is composed of photons, which have the properties of both matter and light. Even Newton recognized that individual photons don’t have color, but they do have different properties of energy that cause them to interact in different ways with physical matter. When reflected, light is perceived by the eye/brain combination as color.

Visible light is a small part of the continuous spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, most of which is not directly observable, and, indeed, was unknown until the 19th century. The visible spectrum extends from red to violet—the colors of the rainbow. They were originally ...