Metal halide lamps have been made suitable for use in outdoor illumination systems over many years. They are also widely used in application and commercial lighting due to their attracting properties such as good quality color, rendering and high efficiency. Over the past few years, a considerable number of studies have been conducted on the electronic ballast with hot restarting and resonance phenomenon. However, very few attempts have been made at the adaptive ignition method according to lamp state. This paper proposes an electronic ballast for metal halide lamps with an igniter for adaptive ignition. The proposed electronic ballast can generate different ignition voltages according to the arc tube state. The experimental results showed that the proposed ballast circuit using adaptive igniter is suitable for 70W HQI lamps.