yellowish lighting for indoor hockey games

I had a problem with indoor lighting recently. I used my Canon G6 on

T for fast shutter speed, 400 ISO, and my newly aquired 580EX flash.

Naturally, I set the White Balance to Flash. The photos of the

hockey players were in focus but too much on the yellowish side. I

emailed Canon Canada and they said I should have used the RAW image.

I don't know how to do that. I tried using it yesterday on my Canon

10D and used the latest ZoomBrowser 5.5 but couldn't. I went to the

Custom Functions and tried to use it but I don't think it worked. I

think it was number 5 or 6 on the custom list. I found that just

using AWB on my Canon 10D looked pretty good. What do you think?

Any suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated? Thanks.<div></div>

Your eye is wonderful: it can correct the color on the spot. A camera needs help in finding the correct color balance for stadium lights (or in a gym.)

 

 

 

Fuji makes a good selection of 4th layer film that helps in the printing stage, but with digital you probably need to take a notebook and keep track of what white balance you use on the game. It will give you a reference for future action shots at the hockey game.

Are you sure the flash fired? Looks underexposed and very noisy. Plus the fact that fore/background lighting is more balanced than I would expect from a flashed picture (you didn't say it was fill only).

 

And you need to learn how to use your tools properly. If you had shot RAW, you would have much more control over the image now.

Colin,

 

How far away from the subject were you when you shot this picture? If beyond the flash's range, then essentially, you're shooting in ambient light, and the WB will not be correct if set to flash.

 

Also some arena lights have a yellow cast to them (I think sodium vapor lights), so you may be best to use a custome WB. Alternatively, learn to use the RAW function and you can correct in post-processing.

 

Good luck,

Also the image file you supplied was rather large and I gave up waiting when it was only one eighth open. No matter what you do, you will not be able to fully colour correct for sodium vapor lighting.

Thanks. Yes, the flash did fire. The hockey players were about 15-20 feet away. I guess the lighting was ambient and the flash only served as fill flash. Canon advised me to use RAW but I wasn't sure how to do that on the G6. How do you process the RAW files later? I'm getting Photo Elements 4 and I think it says it can process RAW files. Does anyone have any experience with this. I tried using Canon's Zoom Browser EX version 5.5 but had no success. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Sorry the file size was too large.<div></div>

Its easy to white balance this image in just about any image editing program. Using the color balance feature, simply use the eye dropper on the ice (just behind the player) as a neutral highlight for balancing the photo.

Sodium Vapor lights are not full spectrum. Correct for one color and the others are off.

 

A Google search for photography and sodium vapor lights will uncover several good articles about the problem. All solutions are only partial due to the partial spectrum problem. Given a choice, I would rather have the skater look normal and the other colors look off.

 

Jim

Not sure how to do this on the G6 but the 10D can do this. Take a shot of just the ice. No red lines, blue lines, skaters, nothing but ice. Then set your 10D (or G6, the manual should say how) to custom white balance and select that 1 shot for the white balance. All subsequent shots should be "acceptable" and you shouldn't need a flash at all.

 

Changing positions or ice sheets you should re-adjust your custom white balance each time. I've talked to TV camera guys that do the NHL games and they say they are constantly adjusting their white balance. Now an NHL rink is going to be lit differently than your hometown rink but the same rules can apply.

 

The problem in shooting ice hockey is the camera 'sees' an oversaturation of white and with poor sodium lighting it tries to compensate. Another option would be to get an 18% grey card and shoot that but those cost money and the ice is right there and lit too. A final thought, I know little about the G6 I'm assuming its a Point & Shoot? If so its ISO is limited to 400 and most all hockey photos are at 800 or above with an aperture of f/2.8. Good luck with the P&S.

Looking at the EXIF data, this was shot at 1/250th second at f/3.5; and the flash did indeed fire. Unfortunately, the data does not include ISO setting; and it's hard to judge because the CCD sensors in "prosumer" cameras are usually only 6mm x 8mm -- About the size of a thumbnail.

 

Also, the lights appear to be metal halide, not sodium vapor.

 

May I suggest the ColorWasher Photoshop plug-in to quickly clean up this photo?

http://www.thepluginsite.com/

 

Cheers! Dan