Yellow Streetlights

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Daz9681

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Darran
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I went out last night to practice some light writing, wasn't interested in the subject, shadows or much else, just wanted to get to grips with shutter speeds and technique.

I used my Zafira as main focal point in an industrial area, however all lighting gave a yellow effect to the pictures, whats the best way to overcome this, wait until i'm in PP to alter WB or can it be combated when taking shots?

Thanks
 
shoot in raw and you can adjust the wb to whatever suits in your editor
 
In 'difficult' light, either do a custom white balance (see handbook) or shoot Raw and correct in post processing. However...

If light sources are mixed types/colours, you can only correct for one - go for the main subject illumination. Also, some kinds of artificial light, yellow sodium street lights in particular, do not emit a full colour spectrum (basically some colours are missing, or much less bright than other colours) so you cannot propertly correct or restore colours that don't exist.

Best advice there is to shoot Raw and fiddle about in post processing until it 'looks' as good as you can get it.
 
If I remember rightly you can't sort out the yellow cast from sodium lights with white balance. I have only been able to get just about acceptable photos by desaturating for yellow; the pictures weren't that good though.

Mike
 
If it's low pressure sodium lighting, there is nothing that can be done with White Balance. The light emitted by these is a very narrow monochromatic band between 589.0 and 589.6 nm.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp

You can't rebalance for wavelengths of light that simply aren't there. It's like having only the Green channel available in Photoshop.

The only options you have are to accept it as-is or a straight conversion to b/w with desaturation.

If there are other sources of light in the scene such as car headlights, you might fare a little better.

High pressure sodium light (which tends to look 'peachy-pink' to the eye) has a broader spectrum and can be more easily adjusted in PP. Even so, because of the somewhat uneven distribution of wavelengths there are some blues and greens which will render poorly.
 
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Yellow or orange sodium lights cannot be colour corrected as that's the only colour they emit. If you try to filter it out there is nothing left.


Steve.
 
some more modern street lights are now white (atleast white-er) than the sodium lights normally put on streets.

if you can find some of those, then you stand a better chance at getting the correct colour.
 
Buy a grey card, and have at least one image contain the grey card. Use the grey card in the image as a white balance point by using the dropper tool in the white balance palette in lightroom. Easy.

Grey cards are not just for exposure.
 
Shoot RAW, use a grey card.. no filters needed. Seriously... one click and you're white balanced.
 
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Even in that yellow sodium light?
 
Nod said:
Even in that yellow sodium light?
Click to expand...


Even in that yellow sodium light :) It may shift certain colours when correcting, but so will an optical filter.

Trust me.. get a proper grey card, and take two RAW versions of your shot; one including a grey card in the frame. Load it into Lightroom, pick up the WB dropper tool, and click the grey card.

Fixed. Then just use the same settings for the whole shoot under the same conditions.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Even in that yellow sodium light :) It may shift certain colours when correcting, but so will an optical filter.

Trust me.. get a proper grey card, and take two RAW versions of your shot; one including a grey card in the frame. Load it into Lightroom, pick up the WB dropper tool, and click the grey card.

Fixed. Then just use the same settings for the whole shoot under the same conditions.
Click to expand...

If the sodium light is the only source of lighting on the subject it can not be corrected.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Even in that yellow sodium light :) It may shift certain colours when correcting, but so will an optical filter.

Trust me.. get a proper grey card, and take two RAW versions of your shot; one including a grey card in the frame. Load it into Lightroom, pick up the WB dropper tool, and click the grey card.

Fixed. Then just use the same settings for the whole shoot under the same conditions.
Click to expand...

Normally I'd bow to your experience, but I believe you're wrong on 2 counts here.

Firstly as others have said, there isn't a wide enough spectrum of light from sodium to create an acceptable rendition of some colours. Try photographing a colour checker under them for absolute proof.

Secondly, a white card is better than a grey card at low light levels due to noise affecting the sampling. The brighter the sample the purer.
 
Depends is you mean low pressure sodium (SOX) or high pressure sodium (SON).

Very few authorities use SOX anymore. SOX is a very narrow bandwidth.. almost a spike on a spectrum graph, but SON is very wide and actually contains a full spectrum, albeit heavily biased to around 600nM.

I've successfully corrected for SOX though using the above method though... some colours just aren't rendered correctly is all... but as I said, the same will be true for using optical filters. My point is, whatever you can do with optical filters you can just as easily do with a grey card and Lightroom. How accurately you can correct for it is down to the inherent qualities of the light source, not the method. There IS no method for correcting SOX as it's a single wavelength lightsource.... using Lightroom and a grey card WILL balance it to a neutral tone though. The inaccuracy of the colours has nothing do with the methods used to correct it.

Balancing SON is easy peasy in Lightroom.

Terrywoodenpic said:
If the sodium light is the only source of lighting on the subject it can not be corrected.
Click to expand...

It can.. in terms of establishing a nuetral white point... accuracy of the rendered colours will be a different matter though. SOX will give very odd greens and blues, and purples, but the overall white balance is still achievable. I said earlier on that colours may not be accurate, but we're not talking about correcting a document for pre press proofing here :)... everything is relative, and you can correct the sodium light's cast quite effectively.
 
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steveo_mcg said:
This was discussed in the summer and the chap who asked did some testing and found a blue 80a filter nicely corrected for the sodium lights.
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=422554&highlight=street+lights+filter
Click to expand...

:wave:

Yes, i had very good results using a blue filter on my old Olympus setup, i haven't got one yet for my Nikon gear as i haven't been doing a great deal of long expose night shooting recently, but when i do i will certainly look into another blue filter

As said, adjusting white balance alone can introduce noise, but you will never get totally get rid of the yellowing, but the blue filter and some WB adjustments were spot on for my needs
 
Pookeyhead said:
Even in that yellow sodium light :) It may shift certain colours when correcting, but so will an optical filter.

Trust me.. get a proper grey card, and take two RAW versions of your shot; one including a grey card in the frame. Load it into Lightroom, pick up the WB dropper tool, and click the grey card.

Fixed. Then just use the same settings for the whole shoot under the same conditions.
Click to expand...

Fixed, but not properly fixed. That's the point of this thread - as you later acknowledge.

It's not just critical professional work, but if you want to get the colour of your girlfriend's dress right and are wondering how to do it, there's a good chance that you cannot, no matter how hard you try.
 
I think we may have our wires crossed. If you mean can you get perfectly balanced colour rendition from sodium lights... then no.. not if it's low pressure sodium. You can get a neutral white point though.... but colours will be very muted and not accurate. With high pressure sodium, you can get acceptable results, but colours will still not be accurate. If you've nothing to compare it to though, it will be fine for most things.



[edit]


Found them!... I took some quick snaps to show how well SOX can be balanced some years ago before they replaced our street lighting with continuous spectrum stuff.

SOX unbalanced.
EURdHLi.jpg


SOX balanced
zdrWhi8.jpg


Colours are muted, but still not bad. It's far more successful with SON though.
 
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No crossed wires David ;) You said use a grey card and colour is "fixed... trust me". When it's not properly fixed and cannot be, and a grey card is not a good plan in a low light situation when noise is likely to skew the reading - use white for colour balance, as recommended in the handbook.
 
HoppyUK said:
No crossed wires David ;) You said use a grey card and colour is "fixed... trust me". When it's not properly fixed and cannot be, and a grey card is not a good plan in a low light situation when noise is likely to skew the reading - use white for colour balance, as recommended in the handbook.
Click to expand...


You can easily set a white point using Lightroom... even with sodium lighting. The OP didn't even mention accurate colour rendering.. just getting rid of the colour cast. I never said colour rendering issues are fixed.. I said white balance is fixed.. which it will be... with one click... no filters necessary.
 
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