Natural Color Photographs Under LED's? Possible.

WeedIsGod · Mar 7, 2013

I heard about this from another member on a different forum, but the information is valuable to many of us so I've decided to create a dedicated thread.

Does your tent look like this when you open it up?

Do photos of your plants look like this?

Haha. Well, by lucky coincidence, you see before you, modeled by the lovely little lady, the new, improved, patented, handy-dandy, never-fail little trick towards taking natural color photos of your plants. The busy LED gardener's best friend!

It's the White Balance setting conveniently built into your point-and-shoot camera.

- Go into "Menu"
- Select "White Balance"
- Select "Custom"
- Grab a White sheet of paper
- Reset your camera's White Balance setting to the White sheet of paper while it's being illuminated by your chosen light source
- Take accurate color photos of your plants

This works for any light source irrespective of color temperature or CRI (*ahem* HPS *ahem*), but we'll keep this our little secret within the LED community.

Enjoy! :thank you:

GP73LPC · Mar 7, 2013

this kicks ass sir and is going to change the way we perceive our LED plants...

:woohoo:

here's a few i took

excellent technique :thank you:

GP73LPC · Mar 7, 2013

exploziv_gbb,

this deserves a sticky for sure !!!!

GP73LPC · Mar 8, 2013

to get this back into the NEW POSTS category

fenomeno_djo · Mar 20, 2013

I have a HPS and this technique didn't work for me. Still just yellow pics.

Skip · Mar 20, 2013

It's not just for LEDs either...
Tired of seeing YELLOW (from HIDs).
This method works for them too.
In fact, it's a good idea whenever taking indoor pics.

The_Protege · Mar 20, 2013

Sticky!

Thank God for this thread. Nothing worse than looking at threads of awful purple pictures.

WeedIsGod · Mar 20, 2013

fenomeno_djo said:
I have a HPS and this technique didn't work for me. Still just yellow pics.

Make sure you're resetting the White Balance settings properly. You should see the change in color on the LCD screen before you even take the photo, ime. Try to set the balance to one of the presets (such as Tungsten if you have it) and see what that does for you. I'd either fidget with the settings once more, or try to find a copy of my camera's user manual to make sure I was doing it right if I was in your position.

Good luck.

hempfield · Mar 26, 2013

Thank you for this tip ! :thank you:

GP73LPC · Mar 26, 2013

nice hempfield.

i noticed these pics in your grow thread :tiphat:

Phychotron · Mar 26, 2013

nice technique, so simple I should have thought about it.

GP73LPC · Mar 26, 2013

awesome

it's nice to see our beloved plants in corrected colors !

hempfield · Mar 27, 2013

Phychotron said:
nice technique, so simple I should have thought about it.

View Image

Either way, your tent still looks like a space shuttle ! :biggrin:

Phychotron · Apr 5, 2013

If I did not know any better, I'd guess this photo was taken under some t5's ~6500. If the camera can do this white balance, It makes me wonder what the plant's 'white balance' would look like. I'm guessing the PAR spectrum is just that, but still good way of thinking about the light shift.

I'd imagine it should not be hard to make a program for a camera and turn it into a PAR meter, if you had a good one to compare it to. If you locked your settings, like shutter speed and aperture you could figure how intense the light is, and use software to gage overall spectrum--like applying a PAR filter to the photo and comparing the differences. It would take a while to sort out the settings, but the actual program could be very simple.

Anyway, check out the thread where midway I learned this WB trick. The photo quality is much higher. Thanks again

GP73LPC · Apr 6, 2013

i just love this trick. all LEDers get in here and learn how to do this.

still like to see a pink/purple pic too, but it's great to see the natural colors !!!

420ish · May 20, 2013

awesome idea!

OKD · Jul 30, 2013

NeWcS · Sep 11, 2013

Yeah that works sweet with a camera. But.....

....Anyone know of an android camera app that allows for 'custom' white balancing? The ones I've found all have pre-set filters.

I stopped taking pictures of my grows cause the pictures always look like shit. But with this trick; hmmmmmmmm

Anyone?

SupraSPL · Dec 27, 2013

Just discovered this trick recently works great

SweetDee · Jun 21, 2014

I know this is an old thread but to clarify .this white balance trick will change the white balance where all the colors are mixed like on the paper but the separate hues in shadows displayed at angle in which they are not allowed to mix be still be slightly off. As you can see in some of these photos. But I mean all and all it's a lot better !

Natural Color Photographs Under LED's? Possible.

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