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.