More on White Balance...

Here's a shot from Pirates-v-Cedar Park that's been RAW converted two different ways:

1) converted as "fluorescent/as shot" or 4000K


and 2) converted as "tungsten" or 3200K in Breeze Browser, which is what I use for RAW conversion.


Fluorescent definitely looks "better" and more "correct".

On White Balance...

Well, the idea that I'd shoot some photos last night at the Cedar Park game (did I mention that the Pirates won, 59-6? No? Well, they did..) while it was "before it was fully dark" turned out to be nonsense. When I got to the high school at 6:30 pm it *was* dark and the only light was the field lights.

Decided to set the white balance at "fluorescent" or 4000K as a compromise/experiment because that's the same color temperature as "standard" metal halide lights, and I figured that having all the photos shot to the same white balance would be better than "Auto" since if fluorescent was off, I could correct duing RAW conversion.

We'll see: I'm burning the *. Cr2 files to DVD right now...

Next up...

VHS Football versus Cedar Park, tonight at 7:00 pm. Right now the long-range doppler radar looks pretty good. Probably wear my full rain suit but no boots. 70-200mm f2.8 zoom with 1.4x extender for 98mm-280mm effective focal length, probably take my Kata rain hood but hope to leave it in the trunk.

Speaking of white balance: I'm going to do a custom white balance after it gets fully dark: shoot a white card, do Menu > Custom WB and select the white card just photographed, exit the Menu, press and set White Balance to the "Custom" icon.

Before it gets fully dark I'm going to set the White Balance at "Daylight" which is 5200K and see how that works.

Metal Halide lamps seem to run in a range from 2300K for "white corrected" (Often used as accent lighting to blend in with fluorescent 2700K applications) to 4000K for "standard" (Used in general lighting; factories: parking lots, warehouses) to 5500K for "Hylux" (Daylight lamps: horticulture, aquariums, high color definition).

Ref: www.venturelighting.com/TechCenter/Lamps/color_of_light.htm

Quickie Tech Note...

Auto White Balance sucks.

A quick hack to overcome some of the bizarre colors rendered by auto white balance in, say, football photos shot at night in available light under metal-halide field lighting is to select a known white area, copy and paste it into a white_sample.tif, and save that.

Then paste the white_sample.tif into a photo that needs a little help, drag it up to a corner, and flatten layers.

Do an Enhance > Adjust Color > Color Cast (or whatever your specific syntax, you get the idea) on the pasted white sample, and voila!

Quick-and-dirty, and it does an amazingly good job most of the time.

Next shoot...

Halloween night up in town, maybe 4:30 pm 'till who knows when.

Shooting photos of anyone and everyone.

I'll be in costume ;-)

Ask for a free (non-Halloween) scary story!

Hoping to see a lot of my Chautauqua buds!

Next shoot...

VHS Pirates football v Cedar Park, Friday October 30, 7:00pm, VHS Stadium.

Hope the weather won't be too crappy; right now it looks like "Friday: A 40 percent chance of rain. Cloudy, with a high near 57. South southwest wind between 9 and 14 mph." with the chance of rain increasing to 90% Friday night.

Oh well, it can't be as bad as Homecoming...

Can it?

Working on...

VHS Pirates football v Lakeside, October 18, 2009. Pirates win, 44-13. Got some very good offensive and defensive sequences. My sense of timing in shooting football is improving. That, and taking over 900 photos helps...

New photos up...

Vashon Pirates Youth Football from Saturday, October 3

VPYF has taken over the 7th-8th grade football program from McMurray Middle School. These were shot at a home game against Gig Harbor.

Working on...

Vashon Island Soccer Club GU14 (Phoenix) and GU13 (Riptide) soccer from Saturday, October 24; VHS Football from several dates; VHS Volleyball from Thursday, October 21

Basically trying to get caught up :-/

Recent shoot

Tuesday 10/27/09: VHS Girls soccer versus Charles Wright, and Senior's Night. The Pirates won handily 4-0, and I got almost no shots of our keeper because she was so lightly stressed during the match.

EOS 5D, hand-held, available light, ISO 1600, 200th sec at f8.0, 70-200mm f2.8L zoom with a 1.4x extender for an effective focal length of 98-280mm.

First Blog!

ha-ha-ha!

That's a /. joke from about maybe ten years ago...