20D White Balance

[drisley]

I just got home from shooting pictures at a University Volleyball invitational.
I used the 20D shooting RAW, and auto white balance.
I am processing the images right now, and the white balance is almost perfect on all of them! I didnt have to make any changes! This is something spectacular for gymnasium lighting.
I was shooting at ISO1600, with shutter speeds of 1/640s - 1/800s.
Unfortunately, I broke the rule of "shoot to the right" to keep from blowing highlights. Even the 20D had a hard time with the dynamic range.
So, in correction there is a bit of noise, but it's not visible at web size or print size. I will post in the share photos forum in about 1 hour.

[Adam Hicks]

I too have been impressed with the accuracy of the 20D's AWB ability. It's done great in a wide variety of situations.

Adam

[drisley]

Threads in the share photo are here:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=44346

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=44347

Entire gallery is here:
http://www.fotop.net/sharpnsmart/volley10022004

[Mark Kemp]

Thanks for the info.

So far I have only tried mine outdoors, so now I know I can trust the AWB for indoors too and the lack of noise at ISO 1600 is impressive too.

[maderito]

Nice series. Looks like the 135/2.0 and the 20D are a good match.

I'm also impressed with the white balance in your images. The players have excellent color rendition despite the indoor lighting. That leaves the backgrounds warm and colorfully saturated - which creates an overall nice effect.

Hard to believe you didn't have to tweak the WB while RAW processing. Makes you wonder whether shooting JPEG's in this setting would yield excellent results while allowing more flexibility for exentended burst mode shooting sequences.

I also like your decision to "shoot to the left." It leaves you with texture in the white uniforms -- nice!

What was the exposure mode (manual, evaluative, partial, etc.)?

[WestFalcon]

Your pictures are gorgeous and extremely sharp. I may have to buy that lens for my time exposures at weddings. ASA 1600 too....wow that's nice!!

[drisley]

Thankyou. :D
I'm off to shoot some more today.
Actually, I was playing around with all the metering modes. I'm not sure which worked best. I still had a few blown highlights, but that may have been at the point where I tried "shooting to the right".
Any recommendations out there what metering mode should work best in this type of shooting?