The present invention employs a spectral and spatial combiner (132) that is capable of maintaining equal optical path lengths of each spectral beam so that a single combined bean (148) can be produced and can be employed in a number of different applications such as a color camera device (Figure 28), a color recording device (Figure 23), a graphics presentation device (Figure 27), an electronic color filter device (Figure 30), a color projector device (Figure 25) and a multi-­channel optical communication device (Figures 31 and 33).