Electronic defects inn‐type GaN were characterized by photoemission capacitance transient spectroscopy. Conventional deep level transient spectroscopy is of limited use in semiconductors with wide band gaps (e.g., 3.4 eV for GaN at 300 K) because it utilizes thermal energy for charge emission which restricts the accessible range of bandgap energies to within ∼0.9 eV of either band edge, for practical measurement conditions. For electron photoemission to the conduction band, four deep levels were detected at optical threshold energies of approximately 0.87, 0.97, 1.25, and 1.45 eV. It is suggested that the above photodetected deep levels may participate in the 2.2 eV defect luminescence transitions, which are also demonstrated for our material. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.