A method is proposed for recovering both the surface-spectral reflectance function and the illuminant spectral-power distribution based on the dichromatic reflection model. A multi-band imaging device is realized by combining a monochrome CCD camera and several color filters, to separate the incident light into six wavelength bands throughout the visible spectrum. We show a measuring method to predict the spectral sensitivity functions of the imaging system. The dichromatic reflection for inhomogeneous objects is described using finite-dimensional models. The estimation algorithms are presented to recover the scene parameters in two steps from the image data. The illuminant spectrum of a projector lamp is recovered fairly well, and the Machbeth color patches are estimated in the average accuracy of about ΔEab = 3.5.