Been mind boggled about this for a while -

 

Why is it so hard to capture true LED colours on camera?

 

I find it so hard to capture the true colours of the lightbar red/blue LEDs. For a while, I've always thought that the colours turn out to look way off because I am walking or because my camera is seperated by a layer of glass if I'm in a passenger seat of a vehicle.

 

However, I just bought LED Christmas lights and I attempted to experiment by holding my iPhone up to the blue light. Sure enough, the picture I take has a teal colour, whereas the actual blue LED has a cruelen-blue colour.

 

Anyone know why that's the case? And it also happens with the professional cameras on Flickr, not just my iPhone, so I think the phone camera being the reason is ruled out (unless I'm wrong!).

 

Regards,

Lash

Could just be the way your phone camera sensor reacts to light.

Edited December 22, 201411 yr by Mustu

Possibly due to the intensity of the light itself and the camera's sensitivity or it could be due to the wavelengths of light that we can see versus that of the camera. As an example, TV remotes have an infrared LED that emits light which the naked eye cannot see but can be seen through a camera. I guess it is possible that such types of light could be an influence to what you see through the camera.

Try taking video or pictures of flashing strobes.. you'll end up with 100 of the same damn picture.

 

Possibly due to the intensity of the light itself and the camera's sensitivity or it could be due to the wavelengths of light that we can see versus that of the camera. As an example, TV remotes have an infrared LED that emits light which the naked eye cannot see but can be seen through a camera. I guess it is possible that such types of light could be an influence to what you see through the camera.

I think this might be it. Throughout the videos I've watched on YouTube, the lightbar of the same vehicle varies in at least 4 different ways in terms of colour. I guess that's just the sensitivity of the camera and the wavelengths it picks up vs. what our eyes see.

A camera is not going to cut it, especially a phone camera. You need a spectrometer.

If you know the wavelength or frequency of the light, you can convert it to HEX or RGB representation. Just gotta hope it is documented somewhere.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=colour+520nm+in+hex