LED House lights

Sgt Pepper 64

Can anyone offer advice on taking indoor pictures where the ceiling lights are the new LED downlighter ones rather than traditional light builbs?

They come out very yellow at the moment

thanks

melekalikimaka

Sgt Pepper 64 wrote: »

Can anyone offer advice on taking indoor pictures where the ceiling lights are the new LED downlighter ones rather than traditional light builbs?

They come out very yellow at the moment

thanks

shoot raw and adjust wb

McVitae

Sgt Pepper 64 wrote: »

Can anyone offer advice on taking indoor pictures where the ceiling lights are the new LED downlighter ones rather than traditional light builbs?

They come out very yellow at the moment

thanks

Check the CRI (colour rendering index) of the LEDs. Unlike incandescents some LEDs are very poor at rendering colour. Others are OK

hunglikeaflee

The best way to do it is set your W/B.

IF not, do as melekalikimaka said, raw and adjust W/B later but this way you might not get the exact colours which might be important.

As for the CRI, I wouldn’t bother unless they are the high quality lamps. First you will get it hard to get the CRI you might get the colour temperature of the lamp. Second with these cheap LEDs the colour will change very quickly as soon as you start to use them.

thedarkroom

You must be using a Nikon, they are often have colour correction problems with artificial light. I have a D300 and its auto white balance has difficulty with tungsten light so I usually set the balance manually to 'incandescent' to get around it. In your case, I reckon that the best option would be ti use a custom white balance rather than using any of the camera's presets. This can be done in the menu system and would involve taking a reading from a white card and saving the result. Obviously, this will only work properly where the LED's are the primary light source. If you have a variety of different light types then you will have further problems because if you correct for one light then the cast from the other will get worse.
Another alternative would be to shoot on RAW as suggested by melekalikimaka and for a test shot to include a grey card. When you open in RAW, use the grey card to set your mid tones and save this conversion to your RAW presets so that you can then apply that adjustment to any other selected image.
See here - http://www.lastolite.com/ezybalance.php#
And a tutorial here - http://www.lastoliteschoolofphotography.com/tag/ezybalance
It shows two options to do either in camera or afterwards in Photoshop. I have one of these little reflectors and it's very handy. I got mine here - http://www.berminghamcameras.ie/store/index.php?target=products&product_id=3901

Sgt Pepper 64

thedarkroom wrote: »

You must be using a Nikon, they are often have colour correction problems with artificial light. I have a D300 and its auto white balance has difficulty with tungsten light so I usually set the balance manually to 'incandescent' to get around it. In your case, I reckon that the best option would be ti use a custom white balance rather than using any of the camera's presets. This can be done in the menu system and would involve taking a reading from a white card and saving the result. Obviously, this will only work properly where the LED's are the primary light source. If you have a variety of different light types then you will have further problems because if you correct for one light then the cast from the other will get worse.
Another alternative would be to shoot on RAW as suggested by melekalikimaka and for a test shot to include a grey card. When you open in RAW, use the grey card to set your mid tones and save this conversion to your RAW presets so that you can then apply that adjustment to any other selected image.
See here - http://www.lastolite.com/ezybalance.php#
And a tutorial here - http://www.lastoliteschoolofphotography.com/tag/ezybalance
It shows two options to do either in camera or afterwards in Photoshop. I have one of these little reflectors and it's very handy. I got mine here - http://www.berminghamcameras.ie/store/index.php?target=products&product_id=3901

No its a Canon 50d, the problem is I want a good enough aperture and low ISO, as there isnt a lot of natural light in there, so I end up turning on the lights.
I just have to do a lot of test shots and playing with settings like you say.
Ultimately I want to blow this up to A3 size, so I want it as sharp and non pixelated as possible.

thanks for the links and advice

mloc

I never understand why anyone with an SLR shoots JPEG (unless for speed).

I'd say shoot RAW, take a gray card and then adjust WB in post-pro. Shouldn't be a problem if the LEDs are consistent. It's fine if they are crap, once they are consistently crap.