Jump to content

White Balance adjustment on LED lights(Cool white >6000K)


Doğa Zeren

Recommended Posts

Hello everyone. I have question for the helpful people of this forum.
Lets say i have a cool white LED light(6000K). As many of you agree this temperature is a bit disturbing for the eye.( At least to mine.) So, my question is which filter(s) should i use for to balance it to 5200K? Thanks for your attention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Does it say "cool white" on the LED? Usually that term describes a fluorescent light that is around 4800K with some green in it.

 

I'd just call a 6000K LED "daylight" but maybe the LED industry is reclaiming that name from the fluorescent industry.

 

A pale CTO or CTS gel would lower 6000K to 5200K, or you just set your camera to 6000K to white balance to the light to correct it to neutral. If the LED has some green in it, you'd also need some Minus Green gel as well unless you can correct it with just white balance. You may want, for example, 1/4 CTO + 1/8 Minus Green.

 

"Daylight" in photographic terms tends to be 5500K or 5600K, not 5200K. Maybe you are thinking of tungsten, which is 3200K, or maybe you want something slightly warmer than daylight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It says "cool white(>6000K)" on the product. I guess it might be even more. But they were too lazy to write the exact value. It gives a really disturbing white light. It's a really cheap one for poor students like me, so it's not a real good equipment but unfortunately it's all we have.
And yes i want it a bit warmer than daylight. Maybe not exactly 5200K but something around it.
Camera option is a bit hard for me because we will use multiple(and different brand) cameras. So i thought controlling the source is easier.
Thanks for the reply sir.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

"Cool white" on an LED is like "auto stop" on a cassette deck - it means they've really got absolutely nothing else to shout about. LEDs that are cool white are made that way because putting absolutely the minimum amount of yellow-emitting phosphor on a blue LED is the best way to maximise sheer output, as opposed to optimising for colour quality. "Warm white" LEDs tend to have much better behaviour, if you can stand more tungsten-esque output.

 

I would assume at least 6000K, if not more, and edging towards the cyan. It will be difficult to figure out what the actual colour temperature of the light is without a meter, so I'd expect to have to eyeball it. By the time you've got it down to some sort of sensible colour output, there may not be much output left at all.

 

Lee Filters have their Zircon range of LED-specific gels which includes warming filters. They're a bit heavier-built than normal gels and designed to survive the heavy shortwave output of LEDs better than standard types. Perhaps investigate that.

 

P

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

If you want the light warmer, you can always white balance to something like 10,000K or even higher. Yesterday, I was shooting a backlit golden hour exterior where the color temp was extremely cool from the sky light. So I ended up dialing in 12,800K white balance in the camera to get a warm golden look.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Does it say "cool white" on the LED? Usually that term describes a fluorescent light that is around 4800K with some green in it.

 

I'd just call a 6000K LED "daylight" but maybe the LED industry is reclaiming that name from the fluorescent industry.

 

A pale CTO or CTS gel would lower 6000K to 5200K, or you just set your camera to 6000K to white balance to the light to correct it to neutral. If the LED has some green in it, you'd also need some Minus Green gel as well unless you can correct it with just white balance. You may want, for example, 1/4 CTO + 1/8 Minus Green.

 

"Daylight" in photographic terms tends to be 5500K or 5600K, not 5200K. Maybe you are thinking of tungsten, which is 3200K, or maybe you want something slightly warmer than daylight.

 

David,

What is the difference between pale CTO, pale CTO and CTS?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

CTS is just a yellower shade, less red, of CTO, same kelvin correction / MIRED values for each strength.

 

I should have said "1/8 CTO or CTS" instead of "pale" to be more precise, though the MIRED shift value between 6000K and 5200K is 26, and a 1/8 CTO or CTS corrects with a value of 20, which would lower 6000K to 5376K -- close enough to 5200K.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CTS is just a yellower shade, less red, of CTO, same kelvin correction / MIRED values for each strength.

 

I should have said "1/8 CTO or CTS" instead of "pale" to be more precise, though the MIRED shift value between 6000K and 5200K is 26, and a 1/8 CTO or CTS corrects with a value of 20, which would lower 6000K to 5376K -- close enough to 5200K.

 

David,

 

>same kelvin correction / MIRED values for each strength.

 

Could you explain 'values for each strength'?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

I'm saying that the MIRED shift amount for 1/8 CTO is the same for 1/8 CTS, and the MIRED shift amount for 1/4 CTO is the same for 1/4 CTS, etc.

 

So if you want to change the color temperature by the same amount, then you can use the same strength of CTO or CTS -- the difference between CTO and CTS isn't the color temperature, it's the shade of orange, CTS is a bit yellower.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm saying that the MIRED shift amount for 1/8 CTO are the same for 1/8 CTS, and the MIRED shift amount for 1/4 CTO are the same for 1/4 CTS, etc.

 

So if you want to change the color temperature by the same amount, then you can use the same strength of CTO or CTS -- the difference between CTO and CTS isn't the color temperature, it's the shade of orange, CTS is a bit yellower.

 

Thank you David.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...