Oldmanphotos Loc: Harvey LA

What white balance setting would be used for the relative new LED lights. They are becoming much more used but there is no listing for these. Thanks, John

BebuLamar

LED lights today can have a lot of different color temperature. Usually the color temperature is listed in the light specification. They don't have a true black body radiation spectrum but are good enough for most uses.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Are you talking about LEDs used explicitly for lighting, replacing traditional flash, or about ambient light coming from LEDs?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

If you are talking about table lamps, are you sure it's not on the container?

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Set your White Balance for the Kelvin temperature of the LED bulbs.

bleirer

I've read that the inside of a Pringles can is a pretty reliable neutral, or a grey card from b and h doesn't cost much. Your camera will have a method for setting the white balance in camera using a grey target, or if you shoot raw you can do it in post.

JBGLADSTONE Loc: Oregon

Oops.

JBGLADSTONE Loc: Oregon

I use a mini pocket LED. I set the K to 10000 and it seemed to be close on my Canon 80D.
I kept adjusting the K as the camera was viewing a white 100% rated copy paper sheet.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Most Photographic LED's are set for about 5600 K, which is daylight between 10 am and 2 pm. Most LED lights for photography have the K setting listed on them.
One of the big advantages of photographic LED's is the fact that they come already balanced for daylight. Trust but verify.

fetzler Loc: North West PA

LED light come in a variety of color temperatures. Photographic LED lights are usually around 5500 K (Daylight). Those for the home can be found with 2700 (Tungsten), 3000,~4000 and 5500K. Another factor that influences color reproduction is the CRI (Color Reproduction Index) this number would be 100 if the bulb matched a black body radiator (Incandescent bulb, Sunlight). Home lights can vary quite a bit with CRIs from about 80 - 95+. Higher is better for photography.

bgrn Loc: Pleasant Grove UT

I would guess if you purchased an LED flash you would have the needed information to make adjustments. The problem might come up when you are somewhere that is using LED lighting and you have no idea what lighting range they are. Might take some experimenting to see just how much difference it makes.

Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

The led lights I just installed in our utility room had 6 different settings to choose from. I pushed a button in the fixture and set them to pure daylight. The instructions had the light temp listed for each setting.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

They are available in so many different color temperatures, giving you a single value would not be helpful.

Relying on the Kelvin temperature is not very accurate, unless you are using the very best LED lights MADE for video, cinematography, and photography.

The $5.00 pack of 60W equivalent lamp bulbs you get at WalMart or Home Depot or Lowe's is likely to be 2700K or 5000K NOMINAL color temperature, but will be missing many parts of the full spectrum. Furthermore, it will probably flicker, requiring a shutter speed longer than the power line frequency (60Hz in the USA).

When shopping for lamps (formal term for "light bulb"), remember these things:

Color Temperature (Noon daylight on a cloudless day is 5500K to 5600K. Household incandescents are around 2750K. Quartz halogen stage lights are 3200K. Cool White fluorescents are 4100K to 4200K but low CRI.)

Color Rendering Index or CRI (A value of 100 is the sun at sea level on a cloudless day — the higher the better for all other light sources. 95 is generally a high quality LED source. Less than 90 is missing (muting) some colors rather noticeably. 80 is really not suitable for photography.)

There are other measurements of spectral output for LED lamps that provide a much finer idea of the spectral uniformity of their output.

To arrive at a reasonably close white balance, I would simply use a custom white balance tool such as a Delta-1 18% gray card (quick, cheap, close to accurate), or an ExpoDisc (expensive, more accurate), or a One Shot Digital Calibration Target (moderately expensive, reasonably accurate), or a ColorChecker Passport (expensive, requires post-processing in Lightroom, EXTREMELY accurate). B&H and Adorama have them, along with many other devices made for custom/preset/manual white balance.


https://glowily.com/best-led-lights-for-film-production/

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I agree. Simply set a Custom White Balance. It will give you the best results in most cases.

Setting the color "temperature" (Kelvin or "K") is only one aspect of "white balance". It sets the yellow/blue (cyan) axis. It completely ignores and doesn't set the color "tint", the magenta/green axis and the other key aspect of white balance.

There's also good chance that the LEDs will change color temp as they warm up and over time with age. Note how a computer monitor needs to fully warm up before it can be calibrated, and how it needs to be recalibrated periodically as it ages... it's the same with any LED lamps you buy. Some LEDs are also variable.... can be set to different color temps.

Not to mention, setting a color temperature assumes that the marked temp ratings of an LED are correct. Particularly among general purpose, consumer grade LED (or any other type of lamp, for that matter) they're seldom very accurately rated. You'd have to use a Color Temperature Meter to get a truly accurate reading... and those meters are very expensive: $750 to $1500 is typical. We had to use those meters back in the days of film, because we didn't have the flexibility of Custom WB that digital offers.

So just learn to set a Custom White Balance. Personally I use a Lastolite EZ Balance target to do this most of the time (when I'm not just using Auto WB, which works pretty darned well). This is a fabric target... pure white on one side, 18% neutral gray on the other... either can be used, though the gray side also can serve to establish accurate exposure. It's conveniently foldable for storage.

I also carry and sometimes use Warm Cards to set Custom WB. This is a set of cards with various tints: two pale blue (to cause slight warming effect), two pale yellow (to cause cooling), a green tint (for fluorescent), and a standard gray card that's white on the back side.

But even a white napkin or piece of paper or a plain white styrofoam coffee cup can be used to set a Custom WB. There was a recent post here on UHH with some links that demonstrated doing that with a styrofoam cup and how surprisingly accurate it was compared to some of the pricey, specialized tools for Custom WB.

LanaM

Use manual/custom setup. Go to Kelvin and finds the best fit. It's very easy to seewhat works best for you.