LED Light Filters to Eliminate Blue Hue

[Ed Venture]

I've been lurking around since I bought my 2008 189FBS a couple of months ago. Since I bought my first trailer in here in Michigan in January, I've had plenty of time to do reading up on mods and maintenance so I can hit the ground running this Spring.

I know there has been a good deal of discussion surrounding LED bulbs and there has been some comments about the bulbs being so white that they are blue in hue and are very cold in color. I picked up a pair of cheap 18 SMD 5050 LED bulbs on eBay and tried them out. While they were equally as bright as the standard bulbs, but were indeed blue/white and pretty stark.

After doing some more research, I found a company that makes theater lighting gels that can be used with LED lights to make them the same color and light temp of incandescent tungsten bulbs. Here is some info on the filter from the manufacturer:

Lee Filters Lighting Gel Sheet 622 One and One Eighth Digital LED C.T.O.

This is a 21 inch x 24 inch half-sheet gel.

Converts white LED of 7,000K to Tungsten of 3,200K.

A common complaint from people using LED lighting is that the white light is very blue, making it look cold in comparison to a Tungsten white light. LEE Filters have solved this problem with the introduction of a new range of especially designed LED CTO Filters. These filters will convert from white LED sources (colour temperatures ranging from 5000-7000K) to the equivalent of a 3200K Tungsten source. This means that different types of luminaires can now be blended together without the viewer or digital camera seeing a difference.

I took a chance and bought a sheet and cut some strips to cover my bulbs:



Here is a shot of two of my lights on. The one in front has the standard bulbs; the one in back has my LEDs with the filters on:



The color is pretty close, but it is still a little cooler. The filter gels also seems to have knocked the total lumen output down a bit, so the are not quite as bright as they were before, but I think its a good trade-off.

For $12 shipped, you can get enough to do 60-80 bulbs. If you haven't been happy with the color of your LED bulbs, this might work for you.

Ed