topic Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:01:44 GMT

Using a Canon 60D and having some issues taking photosgraphs that use intense blue LED lighting and showing up as purple instead of blue

Below is an example of a set I am trying to shoot but the blue is turning out purple.

I have tried all the different color balance settings which will affect white causing it to be a cool white and all the way to warm white but the blue uplighting remains purple.

What I also found interesting is that I took some shots with my iphone and the blue comes out correctly.

Anybody know how I can fix the problem or is this a limit with the sensor on the 60D? Would a higher end Canon camera fix this?

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

Skirball — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:17:22 GMT

Hey, I was just there this past weekend.

It mostly looks to be an issue with your white balance. You can manually select your white balance to get that blue, but it's going to change what is white in the rest of the photo. It looks like there's a lot of florescent lighting there, which is pretty much the bane of photographers. Florescent lighting is actually a sickly green color though you can’t see it as much with your eyes. It’s fine if everything in the scene is green, but when the lighting is mix you have to choose the lesser of two evils, and that usually is to make the florescent white and everything else gets shifted. If you shoot in RAW you can choose your white balance in post and play around to see what you like most. You can also expose the same shot twice, once for the white balance of the florescent, and once for the LED colors, and then combine them in something like Photoshop to get the color you want.

It looks like there’s also some chromatic aberrations, which produce fringes of color on high contrast areas, but that’s not your 60D, that’s your lens. This scene has very bright light, and very dark areas, something called a wide dynamic range. High quality shots of a scene like this would use a variety of techniques to get results that look like it does to your eyes, or to really make those colors shine. Kind of like I described above, combining multiple exposures in post processing. It’s not hard, but it’s more time intensive than a simple snapshot. A scene like this really isn’t going to capture well with a snapshot.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:32:47 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply. 🙂

I tried changing the white balance and even manually selected many color temperatures between 2500 and 10,000 and could never get the blue. I will try maybe shooting RAW and seeing if I can get it back in post processing.

Here are two different shots with different color tempetures but still showing up as purple.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

Skirball — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:21:03 GMT

Interesting. This is just a WB adjustment of a JPG, correct? I suppose it could be all purple fringing, but it shouldn’t show up to the same extent in the reflections. And that would be a lot of CA. Likewise, color shift due to overexposure should be lessened in the reflections. What lens are you using? Is there a filter on the lens?

Also, out of curiosity, what shutter speed did you use? I'm guessing those are neon lights, not LED.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:31:04 GMT

All I did was adjust the the color white balance on the camera and they always come out purple. They are LED flood lights and I was one of the people that installed it. The red and green Christmas lights on the house can also go blue and they pick up fine with the camera but the floods are washed out because they are so intense but wash out purple.

The Lens is a Canon EFS 18-200mm and it was shot at 1/15 of a second.

I will try some more test with less exposure.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

hsbn — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:56:52 GMT

what software are you using to open/process the image? And it is JPG right ? Try to change to picture style to Neutral or Faithful also.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

TCampbell — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 19:36:37 GMT

I'd be interested in seeing how it came out if shot in RAW (which would not apply any color correction at all.)

Also... in addition to the "white balance" setting on the camera, there are "Picture Style" settings. Note that all of this is only ever applied when shooting JPEG (or video) -- but not to RAW (although the tag is recorded with the RAW so that post processing software that knows how to read the tags (such as Canon DPP) can apply it later).

Your camera would have also come with Picture Style Editor software for your computer. You can use this to apply either global color shifts -OR- targetting color shifts. E.g. you could actually create a picture style that targets that violet color and migrates the hue away from red so that it appears more blue. Picture styles can be saved and loaded into your camera.

Note that the default picture style when shooting JPEG will be "standard" if you have not changed it. This picture style does punch up the color a bit. If you want to see what an unaltered image looks like, either shoot in RAW -or- select either the "Neutral" or "Faithful" picture styles (which do the least adjustment to color.)\

BTW, you can download new picture styles from Canon here: http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/picturestyle/file/index.html

(in addition to making your own). But notice the picture style they call "Twilight" -- it's basically doing a targeted color shift which is exactly opposite of what you want (in the case of Twilight, they are deliberately rendering blues as more violet.) That's just an example of targeted hue shift (rather than global hue shift.)

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 19:42:18 GMT

I am just using Photoshop to open the files but they also show as purple on the camera display.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

Skirball — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 21:23:56 GMT

The camera display is a jpg that has the white balance and camera style settings applied, even if you're shooting in raw.

Also, when you go back, if you have another lens try a photo with that, even if it's a different focal length. I'm guessing it's probably a combo of white balance, over-exposure color shift, purple fringing CA, and maybe some camera settings tossed in for good measure. I'm sure I'll be around there this weekend, I'll drag a camera around for grins.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

hsbn — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 23:32:45 GMT

Various picture styles can have different effect on your image. I know for certain some of them turn the red color into orange while other turn blue into purple. So take a few images using different picture styles. I have some shot similar as yours, I'll take a look at them later to see if I can reproduce your symtom using different picture style (I'm shooting RAW so I can change it).

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

hsbn — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 03:57:10 GMT

I took a quick look at my image in similar situation. Changing the picture style does help a little bit. However, the problem occurs only if I pull the exposure level up. If image is underexposed, and I tried to increase the exposure, then blue light will become purple. Changing the picture style then only help a bit. However, if the shot is correctly exposure or near "correct" exposure level, it will not have a problem.
So, did you increase the exposure of your image in post?

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 05:09:34 GMT

The files I posted I just opened up in Photoshop and resized it and saved it out. I am no longer in California but have these same kind of lights that I will do some testing with. Will also try a nikon I have and see if it does the same.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 06:30:41 GMT

I did some more testing and have some interesting results. I also have a Nikon D60 (and having a Canon 60D gets very confusing) and here are the results with setting them to full auto with flash off. Nikon D60 on the left and the Canon 60D on the right.

Some parts of the picture are turning Blue on the Canon but my cheap Nikon remains blue

If I step down the exposure on the Canon 60D I can get the wall to show blue but the intense reflection on top still has some purple in it.

My next test was to overexpose the photo and you can see my Nikon stays blue (Bottom Photo) even though the details are blown out but the Canon goes purple in the over exposed areas (Top Photo).

I tried all different kinds of white balance settings on the Canon but unless I underexposed the picture, it would turn to purple all the time.

I will try shooting in RAW and see if that helps any.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 07:06:40 GMT

Well I just made a lot of progress. If I open up the RAW image in photoshop it looks much better and I can't even make it go purple like the JPG saved on the camera when changing any of the settings on the photoshop RAW importer.

Raw Image on the left and JPG on the right.

My probelm now is I mostly got this camera to shoot video and the video always comes out purple.

You can see my problem in the video below. We have uplights that rotate between red, green, and blue and the blue comes out purple. Not sure how I can fix it since you really can't use RAW for video. Any ideas on how to fix this for video? Since the RAW image comes out good, it must have to do with the profiles built in the camera that takes the raw data and some funny stuff with intense blue.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

ebiggs1 — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:28:33 GMT

Two known concerns with the 60D are:

White balance often excessively orange under artificial light, and

Slight tendency to overexpose in contrasty conditions

If either of these are true, you will not be able to alter them only diminish them with other settings.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

TCampbell — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:59:22 GMT

The camera _does_ apply picture style when shooting video (as well as JPEG). Set the picture style to "Faithful" -- this tells the camera not to manipulate color at all. It should give you the most accurate color. Neutral is similar but neutral actually desaturates slightly and also decreases contrast (and improves dynamic range).

According to Canon, "Neutral" (and sometimes "Faithful") are the preferred chocies by digital film makers who plan to edit the color in post anyway -- because it gives them color that has not been pre-tampered with by the camera.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

neworder — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 16:28:46 GMT

Thanks for the info.

I have tried all kinds of settings and it seems the best is to place the picture style in "faithful" mode and set the color tempature all the way to 10K but still get purples and not near as faithful to the actual color as bringing in the RAW to photoshop which works perfectly and there are no purples. Also did not have much success with using the RAW -> JPG converter built into the camera.

Looks like the 60D is not going to work for me when trying to shoot video with this style of lighting. 😞

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

TCampbell — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 17:08:09 GMT

If "Faithful" isn't doing it, then the only other option I can think of is to use the Picture Style Editor to create a targeted color correction (you can make your own picture styles) for this color and load it into the camera.

With the "Faithful" setting, you would think you would not have to. BTW, it is possible to edit an existing picture style in the camera. The original "Faithful" settings (if you go to that picture style and press the "info" button it will let you change them) should all be set to "0". But the point of the "faithful" setting is that it is supposed to provide no color adjustment of any kind. The color you get out of video or a jpeg should be the same as the color you get when shooting RAW. If indeed you get correct color in RAW, but purple color in JPEG or video when using "faithful" then it makes me wonder if there's a bug in the firmware. I suppose you could eject the and re-insert the battery to make it "reboot" the firmware just in case it's somehow holding on to a previous picture style.

Canon has some YouTube videos which provide picture style and picture style editor tutorials.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

ebiggs1 — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 14:33:46 GMT

If this, know issue, "white balance often excessively orange under artificial light ...", is true, than even 'Faithful' will not correct his problem. Orange would likely cause the blue to look more magenta.

Re: Blue LED Lighting showing up as purple

physicist1 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:51:16 GMT

This has nothing to do with color balance or lens quality. The blue LEDs simply emit near UV, which is picked up by red pixels on the sensor. You can easily prove it by dispersing the light on a CD - there's a clearly visible blue band, and then a purple one. Here's a picture from a 60D:

This phenomenon is apparently more pronounced in Canon DSLR cameras than in some others. Standard UV filter doesn't help much - it only stops much shorter wavelengths.