an ophthalmic illuminator is provided that includes a plurality of color sources , each color source producing a light of a corresponding color ; a combiner for combining the light from the color sources to produced a combined light ; at least one optical fiber configured to receive the combined light and propagate the received combined light towards a distal end of the ophthalmic illuminator ; and a controller configured to control an intensity for each of the color sources responsive to a sampling of a spectral content for the combined light .