Calibrite ColorChecker Turns 50 – 1976 Macbeth Chart, 24 Patches, Virtual Museum and Challenge

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by Johnnie BehiriToday

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The ColorChecker, the 24-patch color reference chart that has sat in front of film cameras, digital cinema cameras, and lab test rigs since 1976, is turning 50. Calibrite, which has owned the brand since 2021, has launched a yearlong anniversary campaign with a virtual museum, an interactive patch-by-patch challenge, a quiz, and a run of merchandise being gifted rather than sold.

If you have ever watched one of our lab tests, you have seen the chart in action. The ColorChecker sits in the frame of every latitude test we shoot, from the Sony a6700 lab test onward, and it is the reference we watch for clipping as we push exposure stop by stop. It is also the chart LUT developers put in front of two cameras when they want to match them, as Joel Famularo did with an ARRI Alexa Mini and a Nikon ZR for his Phantom LUTs for the Nikon ZR. Half a century after its introduction, the chart’s job on set has not changed: put known colors in front of the lens so that camera, monitor, and grade have a shared point of truth.

From a 1976 paper to a camera-bag standard

The chart dates back to 1976 and a paper titled “A Color-Rendition Chart,” published by three scientists at the Macbeth company under the lead of Dr. Calvin McCamy. According to Calibrite, the original purpose was scientific: a tool for evaluating color film. The idea behind it was to place a set of carefully engineered, known colors in the frame so that any camera, screen, or printer could be measured against the same reference.

The corporate history since then explains the various names the chart has carried. Gretag and Macbeth merged in 1997, the ColorChecker line passed to X-Rite in 2006, and in 2021 the brand moved to Calibrite, the company X-Rite spun off for its consumer calibration products. Calibrite says the Munsell Color Company still manufactures the targets, whose color heritage dates back to 1918, and that every ColorChecker on sale today descends directly from the 1976 chart. That is why you will still hear it called a “Macbeth chart” on set, even if the packaging has said X-Rite or Calibrite for two decades.

Why the patches are not simply printed

One detail in the anniversary material is worth pulling out for anyone who has wondered why a small card of colored squares costs what it does. Calibrite explains that the patches are not printed in the conventional sense. Each one is produced from specially formulated pigments applied in a controlled manufacturing process, which is what gives the chart its reference stability over time. A chart that drifts is worse than no chart at all, since you would be correcting toward a moving target, so long-term consistency of the pigments is the whole point of the product.

The press text also lists where the chart is used today: film sets, photo studios, museums, and camera bags. For our readers, the relevant applications are the familiar ones, namely white balancing in camera, setting a neutral starting point in the grade, and matching multiple cameras on a multicam or A/B-camera shoot. Calibrite’s General Manager Stefan Zrenner frames the anniversary around the widening user base, noting that professional photographers and filmmakers continue to rely on the chart, but that product reviewers, educators, designers, livestreamers, and content creators now do as well.

What the anniversary campaign includes

Calibrite has set up a dedicated ColorChecker 50th hub page with three interactive elements. The first is a virtual museum exhibit, the “Walk Through 50 Years” timeline, which traces the chart from the 1976 lab through the X-Rite and Calibrite years and covers the 24-patch Classic in its various sizes as well as the 140-patch Digital SG. The second is the ColorChecker Challenge, a timed exercise that walks through what each of the 24 patches actually represents, which is a reasonable refresher even for people who have used the chart for years without knowing why the bottom row is a six-step gray scale. The third is a Color Perfectionist Quiz that maps users to a product recommendation.

Alongside the online material, Calibrite is producing a limited run of 50th Anniversary merchandise, a t-shirt, cap, and tote bag carrying the 24-patch design. These will not be sold. Calibrite says they will be gifted throughout the anniversary year to the community, and the company is collecting user photos and birthday messages under the #ColorChecker50 hashtag. Calibrite ambassador Alan Shapiro, a photographer, contributes the campaign’s tagline in his quote, saying he keeps a chart in every camera bag so that he starts from a known place and never guesses, and signing off with “Happy 50th, ColorChecker. Color Perfectionists Unite.”

The ColorChecker family today

For video users, the product line splits into two families. The original 24-patch photo chart lives on as the ColorChecker Classic, available in sizes from Nano up to Mega, and as the pocket-sized ColorChecker Passport, while the 140-patch ColorChecker Digital SG serves camera profiling. The video-specific charts, the ColorChecker Video and ColorChecker Passport Video, use a different patch layout designed around a vectorscope: six chromatic chips that line up with the vectorscope’s color targets, six skin tone chips, a linear gray scale, and highlight and shadow reference patches including a high-gloss black. We covered the arrival of the large-format ColorChecker Video XL back in the X-Rite days, which addressed the problem of the chips being too small in frame when the camera cannot be moved closer, for example on drone or rigged multicam shoots.

The Passport Video, which measures 125 x 90mm / 4.9 x 3.5in in its closed case, combines the video color target with a three-step grayscale target for exposure, a white balance card, and a focus target. It is the version we see most often on documentary and small-crew productions, since it fits in a jacket pocket and can be held in the frame by a subject at the head of a take.

Price and availability

The current ColorChecker range remains available through Calibrite’s reseller network. As a reference point, the ColorChecker Passport Video 2 lists at $139 at B&H, while CVP currently has it at €104.63 ex VAT (instead of €122.07) as part of a Calibrite promotion running until October 12, 2026. The 50th anniversary hub, timeline, challenge, and quiz are all free to access.

Full disclosure: This article is sponsored by Calibrite. Editorial content, product context, and links are CineD’s own.

For more information, please visit the Calibrite website.

Is a ColorChecker part of your standard kit, and do you shoot it at the top of every setup or only for multicam matches? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below!