White Balancing...

[sando]

...again, probably.

When doing a band-shoot in a dark club with rubbish lights, what system do you use to WB?

I find myself using auto, and then trying to fix in Lr afterwards... but the scale of temperatures doesn't range far enough either way to get a natural look. I suppose that if the lights are red, then the band should be bathed in red light too... but, I want at least a hint of normality. If you get me!?

How can I identify the different lighting used at a gig and then set the camera appropriately?

[narlus]

shoot raw and don't worry about it. if the light is red and unchanging, set custom temp to ~2200K or so...it improves the accuracy of your LCD / histogram readout

[The Moose]

Definitely shoot RAW and forget about WB until you're post processing. Each photo will be different because of the changing lights. Also, red lights at shows are our worse nightmare. I've found that the only way to recover a photo, or the detail of it really, that was taken with a red light is to change it to black and white (not just saturation).

[narlus]

i find that heavy blues are just as bad if not worse than heavy red light...

[René Damkot]

Worse IMO ;)

But as said: Use a somewhat appropriate WB, so your preview, and more important, histogram, are to be trusted. Then correct the rest in PP.

Heavy red light: WB all the way left, add green, lower red saturation if need be.
Extremely blue (moving head gelled blue): Forget about it. WB 10.000+ is not enough. The image will be BLUE.

[DDCSD]

Blue sucks.