Low or High Sodium vapor lamps.

It's said that low sodium vapor lamps are monochromatic light.

If that's true, can you still WB for it Thanks.

I don't claim any scientific expertise on the subject but a quick look at a Wikipedia article would indicate that the Low LPS lights would be terrible for White Balance use (I guess this is your typical "bad" street light light) -- they have a very monochromatic yellow color range. Terrible to shoot in!

The High HPS on the other hand has a much broader color range so they say they are much better for accurate colors.

tonylong wrote in post #11238113
I don't claim any scientific expertise on the subject but a quick look at a Wikipedia article would indicate that the Low LPS lights would be terrible for White Balance use (I guess this is your typical "bad" street light light) -- they have a very monochromatic yellow color range. Terrible to shoot in!

The High HPS on the other hand has a much broader color range so they say they are much better for accurate colors.

Yeah, I know it's a horrid light Can you adjust Kelvin to correct for it

In my experience the further you get from 5500K the harder it is to get a good looking image, even shooting RAW. Based on my limited experience with sodium lamps my suggestion is not to buy anything sodium based given flashes are so cheap. You'd be better off with a cheap Chinese ebay kit than sodium lights.

drdiesel1 wrote in post #11238206
Yeah, I know it's a horrid light Can you adjust Kelvin to correct for it

I can't give a definitive answer on when/if you might have some success, but from what I've seen with those street lamps, they are so monochrome that there simply is not enough other color info to get a balance out of. You see something similar from infrared shots -- the only "success" I've seen from trying to get something that I can manually adjust to something "different" is by desaturation. But I'm not experienced with IR stuff so I may be missing something.

But, I have done some experimenting with strong colored lights like red or blue bulbs and even though the light source may be tungsten so that there is some light coming through there is no way you are going to get a "normal" color balance out of that...and that's what I've seen from the sodium lights as well.

tonylong wrote in post #11238426
there is no way you are going to get a "normal" color balance out of that...and that's what I've seen from the sodium lights as well.

That's what I see too. They have yellow and some red output. I had a debate going with a Jpeg shooter about his yellow images from a streetlight.

Guess I just need to test it for myself. Thanks, Tony

tim wrote in post #11238211
In my experience the further you get from 5500K the harder it is to get a good looking image, even shooting RAW. Based on my limited experience with sodium lamps my suggestion is not to buy anything sodium based given flashes are so cheap. You'd be better off with a cheap Chinese ebay kit than sodium lights.

Not looking to buy lighting. Just trying to get an image to look better that was shot under a low sodium streetlight.

drdiesel1 wrote in post #11238618
That's what I see too. They have yellow and some red output. I had a debate going with a Jpeg shooter about his yellow images from a streetlight.

Guess I just need to test it for myself. Thanks, Tony

Well, what I read in the Wiki article was that the LPS lights emit only two wavelengths, both very close together, both in the yellow range. So, in the RGB spectrum, I believe yellow combines R and G with (little or no) B. So, what little balance you can get has to pull R and G way back to get anything of any meaning. And that would be very little because the yellow light just doesn't bring out other colors.

drdiesel1 wrote in post #11237918
If that's true, can you still WB for it Thanks.

Low pressure: No.
High pressure: No-ish.

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp
http://forums.popphoto​.com …r-lamps-and-white-balance

Sodium vapor lamps don't emit a full spectrum light, so no amount of post production is going to give you a color balanced photo.

Your best bet is to set up a custom white balance using a good target.

Sodium vapor and mercury vapor lights of all types are not at all standardized in temperature. You can get a great deal of variation from one manufacturer to the next.

The worst situation is in mixed lighting that includes either SV or MV. I often shoot in covered equestrian arenas, where there is a mix of indirect daylight coming from the open sides, filtered daylight through skylights (the "filtering" is because the skylights are always dirty), plus sodium or mercury vapor lighting. You can't set a custom white balance because there's a great deal of variance from one area of the arena to the next. At times subjects will have radically different lighting one side to the other. Ever try to color balance a white horse with a magenta tint on it's face and green tint on it's rump?

Whenever possible, I simply ask that all the artificial lighting be turned off and make do with only the ambient light. Other times all I can do is make B&W images!

WB should easily be able to dial it out completely, but I suggest you don't remove all trace of the sodium cast. That's how it actually was, so it would not seem real if completely rebalanced.

All these lights also vary dramatically in temperature as they warm up, so no published information on colour temperatures can ever be more than a rough guide.

Monochromatic light can't be completely corrected for.

tim wrote in post #11241484
Monochromatic light can't be completely corrected for.

Yeah, that's what I've been trying to say. We're talking about a single light source, not mixed lighting, and that single source has a very narrow monochrome output.

I'm not sure how many who have speculated about getting some kind of results have ever tried this, maybe you have never seen a dark night scene lit only by a single sodium street light. In this scene, you can't distinguish different colors -- everything is a "yellow shade of gray" in the sense of color balance. If you desaturate that yellow in your image you will get the gray. This is because the single light source has no other colors for the objedcts to reflect.

Of course it changes entirely when you introduce another light source, which is why say arenas that include sodium lights in the mix can still be white balanced. But if you are ever in an arena where everything just looks a shade of yello, including clothes and uniforms, then you know you will have problems!

Sorry Tim, but you are so wrong.

A few million years ago I spent what seemed a lifetime being taught lighting design. Of course monochromatic colour casts can be removed. It's not easy, but can be done.