Can you use everyday consumer LEDs to light your photos and video? Check out this guide with samples:
Photographing indoors meant, until recently, changing the White Balance in your digital camera to Tungsten. With incandescent light bulbs going the way of the dodo, things are not always easy. Some of the cheap LED (Light Emitting Diode) light bulbs available in the market may give you a whole rainbow of colours during their lifetime, instead of the “white” your eyes seem to see there. Your camera sees differently, you see!
We’re not talking about calibrated LED panels—and even some of the cheaper ones will not offer faithful colour—but common LED light bulbs that are being used nowadays. They represent, for some photographic work, a good option in terms of light, but users have to understand what they can expect in terms of colour, and investigate in their own market which brands work the best.
Use With Any Light You Like
With digital cameras and a digital world, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to light. Small and big LED lights have changed the way we photograph. While with film cameras the emulsions were bought for a specific type of light and then converted to another through the use of filters, if needed, with digital cameras the White Balance can be set for specific situations—Sun, Shadow, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash, etc.—and adjusted, in some of them, manually, from values, for example, between 2,000 and 10,000 Kelvin.