What objects has the most saturated colors?

shutterhappens wrote:

I want to put together some color test samples, to test the color capability of my cameras.

What objects have the most saturated colors (red, green, blue, yellow, purple, orange...)

Or to rephrase, what objects have colors at or near the edge of the visible color gamut?

Oil paint? Crayons? Children toys? Laser? Embroidery threads? Minerals?

I also want the color to be real color, not dithered or simulated color using RGB or CMYK.

I don't think super saturation will help.

Pigments & dyes will probably be the most saturated, but one I work with shows the issue. - 'Solvent Yellow 124' (a European Customs marker for kerosenes) gives a yellow colour at normal dilutions but the concentrate looks more like red presumably due to it's intense saturation.

Most of the options you list will be coloured using pigments or dyes, but can be saturated or pastel shades. Minerals will have natural colours but some are white & some are strongly coloured (even the source of pigments).

Lasers will usually be a single very specific wavelength, but IIRC green laser diodes also have UV output. I'm sure they won't be the only ones with secondary wavelengths (perhaps at half the main wavelength)

To get pure single wavelength light you need to use a element specific light and a filter or other monochromator. Each element when excited will emit a number of very specific wavelengths, & measures can be taken to block out any that are not desired. This approach is used in atomic spectroscopy where wavelengths need to be accurate to 0.01nm or better.

For your purposes it will probably be sufficient to use an incandescent light source with a range of monochromator filters. The standard Tri colour set of wratten #29, #47 & #61 might be adequate but there is also a strong Tri colour set #25, #47B, & #58 or even the technical set of 7 or 8 filters giving narrower transmission windows (& lower transmission).

Perhaps the easiest approach might just to project a spectrum of your light source with a prism (or diffraction grating) & then photograph that. With the right set-up this could cover all the way from UV to IR - Even modified full spectrum cameras can't see outside of the 190-1100nm range (below 190nm air block UV very rapidly, above 1100nm Silicon is transparent to IR). Getting below 300nm will require rather special lenses