Finger vein biometric systems become increasingly more popular because they offer higher security comparing to other authentication solutions with respect to positive persons experience. Those systems operate on near infrared light (NIR) in wavelength range from around 700 to 1000 nm, however dedicated research to determine impact of NIR lighting on biometric system effectiveness has not been conducted and presented in the literature ever before. In this paper the study of correlation between wavelengths in NIR spectra and effectiveness of person identification in a biometric system is presented. To achieve that goal, a new model of image acquisition system allowing change of light wavelengths has been created and NIR finger vein dataset containing 11 556 images was established. Furthermore, this model was used to perform experimental work and proof that some NIR wavelengths better suit for vein patterns acquisition, allowing to increase the recognition effectiveness of finger vein biometric systems.