What's the Color Temp of Average U.S. Lighting at a Municipal Ice Rink?

<p>Let's assume I shot the "other white meat" to digital, and had a natural daylight balance built in.<br>

<br />Without having filters around, or the speed to spare, what would I need to overexpose to get adequate, not excessively noisy, color information in all three of the curves?</p>

<p>I would guess that they vary except maybe at the pro arenas--although age and when the last renovation took place may come into play. Some will have fluorescent of varying temps and others sodium or mercury vapor. Not sure you will find any standard. A quick way to test would be to shoot some test shots with a digital, at various settings and see what seems to put you in the ballpark, if you will. Otherwise, fix it in the darkroom or in post if you scan it.</p>

<p>I shoot most of my architectural, including interiors and night work, these days with daylight film and don't even bother to filter anymore. I scan everything and can fix mixed light or whatever fairly easily. There are some light sources, rare, that don't fix as well, but I doubt filtration would have helped with those either.</p>

<p>Thanks for the quick response, John!<br /><br /><br />In terms of a correction factor, though assuming no filter and worst possible lighting scenario (mercury vapor) with a mid 2000s film camera light meter, what sort of correction factor would I need to have none of the curves be severely underexposed due to color correction?<br /><br />Want to minimize noise, metered a grey card on the rink and afterwards in daylight for reference, but want to get the processing right.</p>

<p>Remember that you can't put color back into a light source, you can only subtract others! If the color doesn't exist at all, you can't get it back. If it is just low, then your filters increase your exposure by reducing the flow of the others to try and balance the light.</p>

<p>Like I said, I use to worry about it when I shot chromes for architects (using a color meter), but now that I scan everything, I don't-(nor do I shoot for architects much anymore). There used to be tables for different light sources to get you in the ballpark with the CC filtering, but they may be hard to find these days due to digital. But here is a link about Mercury Vapor that might help.</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_halide_lamp#Color_temperature</p>

<p>i dont know the answer the answer to your question, but one alternative approach that might help you move forwards is to try using an ExpoDisk. Put yourself and your camera under the same light that is falling on your subjects (if possible). Put the ExpoDisk over your camera lens and point the camera back towards where you will be when you start shooting. Take a dummy picture with the expodisk in place, both to see what exposure your camera's meter selects, and to capture a custom white balance image (grey tone image). Then use the 'custom white balance' function on the d-slr to set a custom white balance based on that grey-tone image. The expodisk mini-prism layer will gather a sampling of all the differenet wavelengths of light that make up the ambient light, and will filter it through the white layer to create a custom greytone. The custom white balance will match the ambient color temp mixture, as long as the lighting on the scene does not change. If you move around and the lighting changes, then you have to repeat the process. I think this will help your resulting color images to have accurate color hues regardless of what the ambient light mixture is.</p>

<p>ExpoDisk isn't going to help with fluorescent lighting, unless your shutter speed is lower than the frequency of the lights. You'll end up with different color temps depending on what part of the cycle your shutter trips. </p>

<p>Karl, I've found better results adding a half-stop when I'm shooting under tungsten. I shot a few weeks ago under really horrid sodium lighting. The blue channel was very noisy no matter what I did. Like John said, you can't put color back in that isn't there.</p>

<p>Eric</p>

<p>Only John got it: I shot film for this even, making things like expodisk outside of my use.</p>

<p>Karl,</p>

<p>If your camera is able to use a full frame exposure, either from a gray card or a bright white piece of paper under the arena lighting as your color temperature, then you should have no problems with white balance assuming you are using a digital camera.</p>

<p>Karl; Rinks vary all over the place as to lighting types. Here I keep a notebook for each rink I shoot at; with the exposures; lamp types and color. With an ice rink the main cost of operation is electricity; maybe 6 to 13 grand per month. Lights ADD to the cooling load; ie cost. Some rinks have many sets of lamps; ie a low quality; low light level; high efficency lamp is used for public skating; pee wee/youth/adults skates sessions. THEN for a pro game they turn on more lamps; often better ones too. One really only gets a pure color balance with a black body radiator; ie incandescent bulbs. Arc and vapor lamps have notches in the output; a pseudo ill black body. One has the further issue of if the lamps are driven staggered in phasing; or all on one phase of the AC mains too. One can get shutter related banding due to the interaction of the shutter with the lamps flickering output. Typically one if exposing around the ice opens up about 1/2 to 1 stop; since the meter "sees" the sea of mostly white. Instead of searching of a broad brush average answer that does not exist; due actyual real world tests at each rink. Your question is sort of like asking what the average women likes in shoes; it varies.<br>

For film; Fuji 800 superia is a 4 layer film and works well under mixed lighting. For digital try daylight or fluorescnet :) sp settings and add 1/2 to 1 stop for both cases film or digital.</p>

<p>For some comprehensive information on this subject, check out this link: www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=20873</p>

<p>Excellent link John, thanks.</p>