Your White Balance Methods Dim-lit HS Football

I am struggling with white balance on these dim lit high school football fields. For Friday night shooting here in North TX I am getting some natural light of warm up action through to the questionable lighting once the sun goes down. Using AWB gives results all over the Kelvin scale and the colors are very inconsistent. I am using Lightroom for PP, and have tried using the eyedropper to sample a "neutral" but not every shot has an appropriate neutral to sample which produces stuff all over the place. I would really like to get to a point where I could batch set the WB but with the quality of light that we have on HS fields I haven't found a way to do this.

I am fighting the use of flash, going to fight that till it whips me into being no other way too. Does anyone have a flow for setting their white balance;

Start out with manually setting it in the camera?
Adjust camera settings as night fall in?
Anyway once in post, to adjust the whole image set?

Gary, as you found out. the problem is that at some high school fields (and basketball gyms), the lighting actually changes color temperature very fast.

It doesn't matter if you set a custom white balance or use a gray card. Every photo will have a different color temperature.

There is nothing you can do about it.

The best thing I have found is to apply the AUTO white balance setting in Lightroom to every photo which will get you close and then make adjustments as necessary.

1. If you use a white or gray card, make sure your shutter speed is 1/60 or less to avoid the cycle and use that as your white balance point. Fill the frame with the card and set your custom balance. Adjust your setting back to where you had them and get to shooting.
or
2. Give in to the use of flash. Your pictures will get a lot more pop and the colors will look great. Once you learn the K value using the flash at night, it is simply setting it before the action starts and that is one less thing to edit.

UTgws wrote in post #17212588
I am struggling with white balance on these dim lit high school football fields. For Friday night shooting here in North TX I am getting some natural light of warm up action through to the questionable lighting once the sun goes down. Using AWB gives results all over the Kelvin scale and the colors are very inconsistent. I am using Lightroom for PP, and have tried using the eyedropper to sample a "neutral" but not every shot has an appropriate neutral to sample which produces stuff all over the place. I would really like to get to a point where I could batch set the WB but with the quality of light that we have on HS fields I haven't found a way to do this.

I am fighting the use of flash, going to fight that till it whips me into being no other way too. Does anyone have a flow for setting their white balance;

Start out with manually setting it in the camera?
Adjust camera settings as night fall in?
Anyway once in post, to adjust the whole image set?

Since there's no way to stop color balances from changing under the circumstances mentioned, it'll be necessary to keep track of those changes.

A few people use the ExpoDisc gadget to determine white balance, or a cheap knockoff.

And, color targets have long been useful, along with grey and white targets.

The least expensive variation may still be a plain piece of white paper.

Unfortunately there's no way to control lighting unless the school or high school federation allows flash, and even flash, if allowed, has a limited practical range.

Well you all are confirming my suspicions, I was sure in hopes of a better solution.

Using an Expo Disc or gray card or white paper can not help because the color balance of some stadium lights CHANGES rapidly and will be different from one frame to the next. Also some lighting grids actually flicker as well and will make your exposure jump up and down.

tmalone893 wrote in post #17212750
1. If you use a white or gray card, make sure your shutter speed is 1/60 or less to avoid the cycle and use that as your white balance point. Fill the frame with the card and set your custom balance. Adjust your setting back to where you had them and get to shooting.

Actually if it is fluorescent you can shoot up to 1/125 but you have to use even shutter speeds. 1/125, 1/60/, 1/30, 1/8, 1/4 etc...

And your meter is reading the most light that will be present since the lights flicker off faster than your meter is seeing. Chances are pretty good that the colors will be poor and the amount of light will be less than your meter is telling you when using a fast shutter speed.
I made an animated gif to illustrate, referees walking in top of frame illustrates the sequence. Each 1 of 4 shots is 1/1000 sec to stop the action and you can see the light on this field just plain sucks. 5D3 at 5ish frames per second.
You can not take a single shot on a grey card and set WB on this field, you will be wrong most of the time due to the flicker.

Yup, that is exactly what I am talking about Chunky.

Yes if you have to shoot above 1/125 you are not going to get any consistency with color in certain types of lights like fluorescent.