AWB with 2700K LED spots

[JoachimStrobel]

I use AWB (Sony A7) for indoor photos. In my living room, AWB did a good job with the dimmed standard 50W spots. Lately I changed the light to 2700 K led spots from Philips. I noticed, that the AWB does not manage to correct the color any more. There is still is a noticeable yellow tint. I can fix that later, but I wonder why the AWB can not do its job? Is it because the LED spectrum is much narrower than the one from a normal bulb? Did anybody else Observe this too?

[torger]

I use AWB (Sony A7) for indoor photos. In my living room, AWB did a good job with the dimmed standard 50W spots. Lately I changed the light to 2700 K led spots from Philips. I noticed, that the AWB does not manage to correct the color any more. There is still is a noticeable yellow tint. I can fix that later, but I wonder why the AWB can not do its job? Is it because the LED spectrum is much narrower than the one from a normal bulb? Did anybody else Observe this too?

It depends on the LED, some high CRI LEDs are almost as good as halogen these days concerning the spectrum. If the spectrum has narrow band peaks it could confuse the auto white balance though. For as low as 2700K I think that a slight yellow tint in the final image is desirable though, as our eyes consider such low temperature light to be a bit yellow, and thus a warm tone of the final image looks more realistic. What's a suitable amount can be discussed though... it would be easier to judge with an example image :-).

AWB is far from an exact science though, and you can see how much it differs between different manufacturers and camera models. If there's mixed light it becomes even more messy...