Can these be saved?

wmstumme · January 6, 2007

Well--last week I asked for some lens recommendations for some indoor basketball. (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=50409) I ended up going with the 50mm f1.8. I know I'll be shooting much more outdoors in the Spring and Fall than I will be doing outdoors--so given my tight photography budget, I decided to save the cash now and spend it on something like a 70-200 f2.8 in the spring.

So, I got the lens a day or so ago and tried it our tonight at my daughter's basketball game. So here's the issue: this gym has HORRIBLE yellow lights--you really notice it when you walk in the gym.

I set the camera at 400 iso, f/1.8 and 1/125 sec. on this shot (although most were at f/2.2 and 1/200). I seemed to be getting enough light for a decent exposure--but I've got a horrible yellow cast to everything.

I included this one because if you look behind the ref, you can see color from the hallway which is lit by "normal" lights. This is exactly how the shot came out of the camera--no Photoshop etc. I've tried doing a bit of processing with the shots, but I can't get anything to work.

Unfortunately the girls play in this gym all season--so I'm going to deal with this all year.

Will a colored filter help--or should I just convert everything to black and white? I welcome any suggestions.

Regards

Will

blackholewon · January 6, 2007

Flash Needed
Well - try flash. Low light and movement are just too challenging without it. There are struggles with flash - shadows. They can be cured with remote flash for back-lighting. But many gyms won't let you. Try F2.8/500s/640iso and try different settings with flash. If you are closer you can go as low as -3.0. Use a soft cover. And white balance.

Here are some photos to look at
http://www.visionshots.smugmug.com/basketball

good luck -

LuckyBob · January 6, 2007

Sorry it didn't turn out well; it looks like the white balance is off. If you shot in RAW mode you could most likely salvage the photos by adjusting the white balance in the RAW processing software; if you didn't, you kind of out of luck for salvaging color images as it looks like the red channel is close to pegged across the whole JPEG you posted.

If you plan to shoot in RAW in the future, the white balance won't really matter at the time of shooting since you can always adjust it later (although getting it closer to correct will help the LCD preview and histogram

). Next time you're there bring along a white sheet of paper (or similar) and use the custom white balance function in the camera to get *much* closer to the light's true color. Good luck

blackholewon wrote:

Well - try flash. [...] If you are closer you can go as low as -3.0. Use a soft cover.

The only issue I could see about shooting with a flash (especially with the FEC turned way down) would be that the color of the light from the flash and the horrid gym lights might clash badly. Since the images you're getting in the gym are pretty close to proper exposure at 1/200th - f/2.2 - ISO 400, you'd either have to shoot stopped down, at a lower ISO (both of which would hurt the flash's range), or live with a within-a-stop-or-two mix of white light from the flash and orange light from the gym. Granted, you could check the color balance of the gym (via shooting RAW and checking the correct temperature Kelvin in the RAW software) and use color filters over the flash head to match the gym's lighting, but on a limited budget a good flash and gels will be tough.

donek · January 6, 2007

I'd recommend shooting in Raw and adjusting WB in post for now. Try setting to a standard WB in post. If you find one that comes close, set the camera to that rather than Auto when shooting. You can tweak things from there if you need to.

I'd also recommend going to ISO 1600 and getting your shutter speed as clost to 1/500 as possible. This will enable better stop action when things get fast.

kammerman · January 6, 2007

Hi, there....

I recently photographed a basketball game, but did a custom white balance using www.BalanceSmarter.com.
I have the smallest size, which arrived a few days before the game.

I shot large jpegs and the colors were perfect!!! I was totally amazed. Not one needed to be color adjusted.

Sorry about your photos. You must have been disappointed when you saw them.

Best wishes,
Lisa

FatNakedGuy · January 7, 2007

Convert them to B&W and they will come out just fine!

Kenny · January 7, 2007

Hi Will,

If you have the Photoshop CS3 Beta, you can open the image in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) and adjust the white balance as if it was originally shot in RAW format...

This is just a quick 10 sec adjustment...

Untitled-11.jpg

Yours...

wmstumme wrote:

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ken

wmstumme · January 7, 2007

Thanks for all the notes. Really appreciate all the advice. Probably not too much I'll be able to with these.

I got the user manual out today and read through how to set up custom white balance. I used some very yellow lamps/lamp shades around the house to do some tests with. Think I figured it out. We'll see next week.

Yesterday was probably just not my day. In the morning I went to my other daughter's indoor field hockey games. Light wasn't too bad--nothing close to the yellow mess at basketball. I was shooting everything manual--but for some reason I neglected to set the aperture. So, after buying a f1.8 lens, I shot everything at f5.6. So, I was shooting shots from around 1/125 to 1/200, but with 800 ISO. Got some underexposed shots, with a good bit of noise. However, I was able to clean those up a little more.

Here are a couple:

I guess this is how you learn...

Regards

Will

oldtime · January 7, 2007

With a 1.8 bump it up to 2 or so
these are way underexposed and at 5.6 and 1/120-1/200 You will get to much motion blur with anything moving and underexposed pictures

I shot someBB for the 1st time with a 120-300 2.8 sigma the other night and at 2.8 was able to shot 1/250-1/500 no problem

example at 1/250 ISO 1600 Noise Ninja ROCKS

I don't see why you are having such problems, are you shooting manual mode??? also I would shoot in RAW , much more room for corrections before converting to jpegs
or just in some dark dungeons?

blackholewon · January 7, 2007

In sports you need shutter speed to get rid of the blur. Take a look at the stick and ball. Minimum 350 but 500 works much better. Indoor shooting is very difficult, but the one thing you need to work around is shutter speed or else the action won't stop for the photo. Everything else is meaningless without the action stopped. I've gotten many blurred images trying to let in more light, but if the gym is tinged yellow, flash is the only way to go. back lighting with a remote flash isn't that hard and it is effective to get rid of the shadows if the gym keeper lets you. With a 1.8 and 500s you can get great shots with flash. You won't need alot at close up, just enough to get the color in the photo. I often shoot from high up with a 2.8/80-200, 500s, 640-1000 iso, flashed and get great results mid court. Around the bucket is where the shadows show and is where back-flash is needed.

The photo with the thumb down baller is great! Of course he's not moving too fast and the gym lighting looks way better than the girls bb yellow shots. There any very few gyms in high school with GREAT lighting. College is a different ball game. I don't think you need to shoot raw, but rather get the settings correct so you don't spend an enormous time in post production. It can get too cumbersome and ruin the fun.

Good Luck -

wmstumme · January 7, 2007

oldtime wrote:

I don't see why you are having such problems, are you shooting manual mode??? also I would shoot in RAW , much more room for corrections before converting to jpegs
or just in some dark dungeons?

Yes I am shooting manual, just not doing a great job of it. I've been shooting in JPG for the convience of the small file sizes.

It was my own mistakes giving me many of the problems (failure to set the aperture/failure to adjust white balance)--as well as the dark/yellow BB dungeon. Going to try and use my lessons from these adventures next weekend. I'll let you know how I do...

(Don't you love how the camera adds make it seem like all you have to do is point and click....)

Will

blackholewon · January 8, 2007

A Tip
OK - who didn't start out with the problems. Try this. Get to the shoot 1/2 hour early. Run off a gig of photos at each ss/f/iso. see what you get before you shoot. The best way to learn is by doing the math. You'd be surprised how much you'd learn by shooting a few hundred test shots. What I do. Got laptop in pack and check photos full screen before the games start. It takes time but it works.

Good Luck -

FatNakedGuy · January 9, 2007

blackholewon wrote:

shooting a few hundred test shots.

A few HUNDRED test shots? WOW! Thank goodness for digital!

slapshot · January 9, 2007

I'm no expert but...

In PS2 or other image editing program, go to curves, set the white, black and grey points to areas of the picture that should be white, black and grey. Perhaps the referee's white and black stripes are good reference points. Your color cast will be gone.

This will probably make the whites too white and the blacks too black, so you will need to adjust curves to pull these values off pure black and white. See Adobe PS Help or search the web or this forum for tutorials.

You do not need to have shot the image in RAW to remove color casts.

LuckyBob · January 9, 2007

slapshot wrote:

You do not need to have shot the image in RAW to remove color casts.

Sometimes; color casts removed in JPEG images result in a loss of dynamic range. If an image has a slight color cast, it can be easily fixed in JEPG without any major problems, but on images like the original post, there's barely any data in the blue channel to work with and very low contrast in the highlights in the red.

On the other hand, if the color cast can be resolved with RAW white balance adjustments, there's basically no dynamic range loss, and in images with multiple lighting types (also such as the original post's image), you can run off multiple images with the correct white balance setting for each lighting type and combine them in Photoshop.

FatNakedGuy · January 10, 2007

OK kids,

I shot an indoor basketball game last night and configured the camera with settings specified here (2.8, 500s, and 3200iso to make other settings work).

The pictures are extremely noisy (funny, they looked lovely on the tiny preview screen..haha)

With that said, has anyone here tried Noise Ninja to remove the noise? How was your success with this product? I am considering purchasing it if all my images are going to be noisy in the gym.

Thanks in advance!

digismile · January 10, 2007

Will,

As has already been pointed out, the color cast is due to an incorrect white balance. Fixing a slight to moderate color cast can generally be pretty easy. This is quite extreme. However, I can offer you a couple of different ways to eleminate a color cast (in addition to the suggestion of using CS3 beta). Hopefully you have Photoshop ...

But first, let's just review what we are trying to accomplish. Had this photo been taken with a daylight balanced film, we would have had a similar result if no filter was used. To correct this at the time of the shot, we would have put a filter in front of the lens that filtered out mostly yellow/orange and let most everything else through. To do this, we effectively place a filter that is the inverse color or color opposite to what we want to filter out. In this case, we are looking at something fairly blue. You will see how this works in a minute.

So here are a couple methods to eliminate a cast:

Method 1. In photoshop (CS2 and possibly earlier), we have a reasonable equivalent of our on-camera filters. Simply duplicate your original layer (because this action will permanently change the image), go to Image->Adjustments->Photo Filter. You can then select a filter. In this case, you can tell that the picture is "too warm" (yellow/orange/red) and needs to be "cooler". There are 3 cooling filters available (#80, LBB, and #82). Simply try each one and adjust the density slider to taste. I preferred the #82 with a density of 74%.

Method 2. The second method is actually the same as method #1, except that you have a little more control over the process. You will now see what I meant about the opposite color.

So like before, copy the original layer. Now, on the copied layer, go to Filter->Blur->Average. You have now turned the entire layer into a nice shade of orange! (This was the color average of the entire image).

So what do we do now? Change this orange layer into it's reciprocal color by going Images->Adjustments->Invert (or Ctrl-I on the PC). Now instead of an orange layer, we have a blue layer, now what?

Change the Blending mode of the Blue layer from Normal to Color and adjust the opacity to taste. I think I used an opacity in the low 40's:

The lower the opacity that you use (i.e. the stronger you need to filter out the undesired color), the flatter the image will appear.

This can then be improved with contrast and saturation layers. In this case, the #82 filter did a pretty good job and I'd probably use it if I only needed to fix a couple of photos.

The advantage of using this blending layer method is that it can be copied to other images with a similar color cast. You may have to do more work initially, but you will be able to simply drag the adjusting layer(s) to the new image and have most of the work done for you.

A second advantage is that you can control which areas to adjust on the image by using masks (as you pointed out, the area behind the ref didn't have the same color cast as the rest of the picture)

Optional method 2B (really the same as two, but slighty different): The final result has a lot to do with the color used on the blending layer. In method 2, we blurred the "average" of all colours. This is usually pretty good. But you might have a photo where the color cast is more evident only in some areas and not others (multiple light sources) which will affect the "average" that is used. Rather than Blur->average, you would do this instead:

Insert a new blank layer (Ctrl-Shft-N), use the color sampler and sample the color cast (if you look at this photo, not all areas are exactly the same intensity of orange), fill the blank layer with the sampled color (Alt-Backspace), and like before, change the blending mode to Color, adjusting the Opacity to taste. All this did was give us more control over the color to be filtered.

Maybe this will help rescue a photo or two. At very least, you'll be able to adjust moderate color casts more readily.

Like everything in photoshop (and photography for that matter), the more effort/practice you put in, the better the outcome. Both these methods were literally done in seconds, so the final outcome wasn't too bad considering the time spent.

There are other ways to improve color that require considerably more time and effort, but the results can be worthwhile. You will find several posts/tutorials by our dgrin member Rutt who is an expert on many of Dan Margulis' Color Lab techniques (for those evenings when sleep isn't working and you want to learn something new!)

Better luck with your next shoot,

Brad

wmstumme wrote:

Kenny · January 11, 2007

Hey Brad... great info. I've stored those techniques away. Very good explanation... have you thought about doing a tutorial?

Cheers,
Ken

slapshot · January 11, 2007

FatNakedGuy wrote:

OK kids,

I shot an indoor basketball game last night and configured the camera with settings specified here (2.8, 500s, and 3200iso to make other settings work).

The pictures are extremely noisy (funny, they looked lovely on the tiny preview screen..haha)

With that said, has anyone here tried Noise Ninja to remove the noise? How was your success with this product? I am considering purchasing it if all my images are going to be noisy in the gym.

Thanks in advance!

I would recommend shooting at a lower ISO and a lower shutter speed. 1/500 is not a magic number to freeze action. The speed of the subject and it's distance from the camera also play a factor. I would experiment with substantially slower shutter speeds. You will lose some images due to unacceptable blur, but I think overall you will have more good images compared to shooting at extremely high ISO. You will also find that original images that are slightly underexposed can be brightened sufficiently in post processing. So in my opinion, lower ISO, lower shutter speeds, see if it works for you. Shooting youth ice hockey I go 2.8 with ISO no higher than 800 and take what I can get on shutter speed. Good luck!

SuperJared · January 12, 2007

When you have an awful white balance problem like this check your levels. Use the different red, green, and blue levels (from the dropdown in the top of the levels dialog.

Look at the following histograms.

After modifying those appropriately and adding a slight cooling filter, here is the final image. It's certainly not perfect but has significantly better color than the original. When a white balance is so far off, it's hard to get anything print-worthy.

wmstumme · January 21, 2007

Okay:

Same gym. Same horrible lighting. Two weeks of practice. Still not perfect, but I think I'm making a little improvement.

Shot at ISO 800, f 2.0, 1/250

Thanks for all the comments and recommendations.

(PS: the girls won too!)

Willl

Steve Cavigliano · January 22, 2007

Much better Will

Still a bit too yellow, I think

Maybe a bit more like this?

You have some knowns in this shot. You know the basket bumper is blue and the shorts of one team are blue. You know the skintones too. You can use the bright part of the white jersey for your white point. But you will usually have to tweak to get the skntones right under gym lighting.

Still, real good progress and you should be proud of your efforts

Steve

blackholewon · January 22, 2007

Better is good.
You're a quick study. Good work.

wmstumme · January 25, 2007

Thanks for the positive comments. Really nice to have a place like Dgrin to get the kind of feedback and ideas a rookie needs in order to improve.

Thanks to all

Will

Can these be saved?

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