What is CRI?

When you choose a light for video, brightness is only part of the picture. Your camera also needs accurate color. If a light makes skin look too gray, too green, or too washed out, turning up the brightness will not fix the whole problem.

That is where CRI comes in. CRI describes how accurately a light source renders color.

CRI stands for Color Rendering Index. It is a scale from 0 to 100 that measures how accurately a light source renders colors compared to natural daylight.

A higher CRI means colors look more accurate under that light. A lower CRI means colors may shift, lose detail, or look unnatural.

Brightness tells you how much light a product can produce. This is usually measured in lumens.

CRI tells you how accurately that light shows color.

A light can be bright but still render color poorly. That means the scene may be well-lit, but skin tones, products, or background colors can still look strange on camera.

Color temperature controls whether your light looks warmer or cooler.

CRI measures color accuracy within that light. In other words, color temperature changes the tone of the light, while CRI describes how well that light preserves the colors in your scene.

Good lighting should help your camera capture a clean, natural image. CRI affects how true those colors look. A higher-CRI light can help with:

• More natural-looking skin tones
• More accurate product colors
• Cleaner-looking desk and room setups
• Less color correction after recording
• More consistent results across calls, streams, and videos

This is especially useful if you record product shots, film close-ups, stream with a face camera, or appear on video calls where you want your image to look natural.

For everyday video calls, streaming, and recording, look for a light with a high CRI. As a general rule, CRI above 90 is considered good for camera use, while CRI above 94 is a strong target for more accurate color.

Elgato Key Lights are designed for camera setups, so their CRI ratings are a useful example. Key Light Air MK.2 and Key Light Neo both have a CRI above 94 percent and adjustable color temperature from 2900 to 7000 K. That means you can adjust the warmth or coolness of your light while maintaining accurate color rendering for video.

Key Light has CRI above 92 percent and is the higher-output option for larger setups where you need more brightness and coverage.

You do not need to choose a light based on CRI alone. Placement, brightness, color temperature, and your camera settings still matter. But CRI is useful when comparing lights because it indicates whether a light is designed to render color accurately, not just brightly.

CRI is not the only lighting spec that matters, but it is one of the easiest ways to judge color accuracy. If you want your camera image to look natural, choose a light with enough brightness, adjustable color temperature, and a high CRI.

Explore Elgato Key Lights on elgato.com.