What Color Temperature Should Be Used For Night Photography Under Street Lighting

Hello everyone,
I have a Canon EOS Insubordinate XSi and I have a project that volition have me on a rooftop overlooking a downtown street. Recently, the town replaced all of the street lamps with LED street lights. I will be taking pictures of the street at night and was wondering if anyone could requite me whatsoever tips on which settings I should use in order to get the best results. Thank you so much!!

The city just fabricated things easier on you


Where I live, they recently changed from sodium-vapour lights (old-fashioned orange) to LED. Thank you to that change, I can really leave nighttime photos in colour. Previously, that was catchy as the colour bandage was besides astringent to correct for. Auto-white balance even works quite OK with these LEDs at dark, so that’s one thing less to right for.

The main result I see is that it’due south much stronger directional light; on the positive, that makes for articulate shadows and a lot more credible sharpness, but it also ways that un-lit parts pretty harshly drop off to black. If you need to circumvent that, I’d try a HDR-like approach (either exposure blending or HDR).

Paul; LED’s tin can be very specular in advent, and hard to command. I recommend yous do what you can to keep direct light out of your lens from whatsoever relatively close luminaires. Besides, if your photographic camera supports custom white remainder, gear up your white balance using a white card immediately beneath i of the streetlights, and then apply that equally the white balance for nigh of your shots. Unlike LED’s tin take very different color ranges and temperatures, so there is no one correct setting for LED’south. Also, the LED’south volition tend to be out of phase with other light sources. You will have to check that you are getting the colors yous desire, depending on the available lite in whatever given scene.

The LED street lights are great. Non only are they white, they likewise practise not put much light upwards like the old lights did.

We no longer take an orange glow over congenital up areas. This pleases both the astronomers and those who indulge in Milky Manner photography.

You should shoot in RAW and so any decisions about white remainder tin be made at your leisure when converting the RAW image.

Even older, mercury lamp take almost no blood-red. (Some accept phosphors to add it, merely not ordinarily for street lighting.)
High pressure sodium are the orangish-white color mentioned in a higher place. I believe better than mercury, but still hard to correct.
Low pressure sodium (San Jose, CA, for one) are a very pure yellowish. Ii very narrow, and very shut together, spectral lines.
White LEDs employ a blueish emitting diode and yellow emitting phosphor. For home employ, more than yellow is closer to incandescent wait, though less efficient. Street lighting is likelier more than blue, but still not then bad. As mentioned in a higher place, try to set the white balance close to a lamp, earlier shooting.

Like I said earlier, shoot RAW and you can cull the all-time white residuum

after shooting
when converting the RAW images.

Setting a Manual White Balance does not exclude making further choices near white balance at one’s leisure in the Digital Darkroom​

In colour negative film days, it used to be that i could correct on press, but and so subsequently comes the suggestion to use blue bulbs for flash, and appropriate filters in other situations. You tin can correct later, but information technology is best to become close in the first place.