grr, red/green lights in basketball

ASkip

Hi,
I know this comes up all the time, but I hardly ever run into the cycling lights in gyms, guess I've been lucky. But this week I went to a gym that looked like a barn with the worst lights ever. Half a picture would be green and half would be red, or they'd align to make the whole thing too bright. I tried AWB, then setting the white balance so it was ok with one or the other and shot some raw. I guess the bottom line is just to manually correct each picture so it's kind of ok at the subject? Is that what you guys do? It's So annoying.

here's a couple pictures I tried to fix, but still they're off.

This one's green on the left, red on the right.


red left, green right, you even see the lights are not the same color:


and one shot from the play that I never catch onto fast enough.. someone passes the ball high towards the net so that a guy there jumps up and slams it in (can you tell I don't know a lot about basketball?). One of these days I'm actually going to get the sequence of him catching it and putting it in. Little bit late here:

Anna

jimqjr

Hello Skip
I have no clue about the lights never seen that before.
Question though how to you get the colors to look metalic?
Thanks for any direction.
Sorry I do not have an answer for you.

ASkip wrote:

Hi,
I know this comes up all the time, but I hardly ever run into the cycling lights in gyms, guess I've been lucky. But this week I went to a gym that looked like a barn with the worst lights ever. Half a picture would be green and half would be red, or they'd align to make the whole thing too bright. I tried AWB, then setting the white balance so it was ok with one or the other and shot some raw. I guess the bottom line is just to manually correct each picture so it's kind of ok at the subject? Is that what you guys do? It's So annoying.

here's a couple pictures I tried to fix, but still they're off.

This one's green on the left, red on the right.


red left, green right, you even see the lights are not the same color:


and one shot from the play that I never catch onto fast enough.. someone passes the ball high towards the net so that a guy there jumps up and slams it in (can you tell I don't know a lot about basketball?). One of these days I'm actually going to get the sequence of him catching it and putting it in. Little bit late here:

Anna

vince71

jimqjr wrote:

Hello Skip
I have no clue about the lights never seen that before.
Question though how to you get the colors to look metalic?
Thanks for any direction.
Sorry I do not have an answer for you.

The metallic sheen could be from the material used to make the uniforms. It looks like dazzle cloth and it has a reflective value.

Vince

ASkip

vince71 wrote:

The metallic sheen could be from the material used to make the uniforms. It looks like dazzle cloth and it has a reflective value.

Vince

yeah, I didn't do anything to make it look metallic, they are just really shiny uniforms (the green ones). Plus most of the pictures are at ISO4000, so they might be missing some detail too.
anna (askip)

Gringriff

Askip

First off - Nice Photos I think you've done very well with these colors and have some nice action captures.

Unfortunately I run into these cycling lights all the time where my kids play - a gym built long ago like 60 to 70 years ago. I try AWB, different tempertures, white paper, and gray cards but still can not get consistent colors.

It is recommended to set the Custom WB using shutter speeds around 1/20 to 1/60 to get more average value for the light and that does help. However, I still find that I have to adjust the WB on so many of the shots. I agree it is annoying.

Andy

South Shore Snapshots

Shooting hockey is no different. At any one time, I can get two or three colours in a four shot burst of one guy taking a slap shot or crashing the net. It's infuriating to say the least. In the end, what I often do is simply choose the "whitest" image of the four to keep and cull the others right out.

Here's a big body check sequence and you can see how the fluctuating lights cause various colour reflections...

http://southshoresnapshots.smugmug.com/Sports/200910-Windsor-Lancers-Hockey/Windsor-Lancers-v-Waterloo/11291562_MfeS4#792329241_6Anya

scroll through the next three...to see full effect. To my eye, the third in the sequence "2954" is the only properly balanced one.

Rob