Language of Light

3.Instrumentation

3.3 THREE-FILTER COLORIMETER

Instruments designed for measuring coloured light, which make use of three filters whose spectral sensitivity are matched to the CIE tri-stimulus colour matching functions, are known as three-filter colorimeters. Besides chromaticity measurement, these meters usually include one of the four basic photometric measurements, i.e., luminance, illuminance, luminous intensity, or luminous flux measurement.
These instruments use detectors which comprise high quality photodiodes with series-connected filters. The incident light is converted by the detector into signals which directly yield the standard XYZ tristimulus values.
Nevertheless, matching to the standard CIE tristimulus curves can be achieved only with finite accuracy. Deviations will occur in the defined CIE curves and in the sensitivity curves of the measuring instrument. These differences are negligible as long as the light to be measured exhibits a continuous energy output over the entire visible spectrum. However, the error may be significant if steep edges or spectral lines occur in the spectrum. Hence, three-filter colorimeters are not usually suited to measure light sources with spectral lines, e.g., discharge lamps (refer to Fig.3.2.3.5a), or with narrow spectral energy distributions, e.g., LEDS (refer to Fig.3.2.3.5b).