As I was looking through my shots, I was picking up sporadic color casting, which was coming from the lights cycling. I was able to correct in post-processing, but have a question for those that have shot indoors often, hockey or otherwise.
How do you set your white balance indoors? Custom white balance at a particular spot (court, ice, etc.), handle it in post-processing, or something else?
The white balance on that shot is pretty good. Was this adjusted in post?
I normally use a 18% reflective gray card. It's important to make sure the light falling on the gray card is in the same plane as your subjects and that the light is the same light that is falling on the subjects.
I shoot at 1/60s or slower (to eliminate the color cast issue) and fire a burst. I then choose one of the shots that is the closest to looking white. At 1/60s or slower, they should all be pretty much the same color..
I also like to fill the frame with the gray card when shooting.
Now, with hockey, I've had decent results using the "dirty" ice for a white balance reference. By this I mean ice that is well skated on - not freshly Zamboni'ed. Also, make sure you're not getting any transient colors (like from a scoreboard or other electronic sign). I zoom in on the ice and fill the frame with uniformly "white" ice. This isn't as precise as a gray card, but one can't always go onto the ice to do a "normal" CWB (as in higher levels of competition).
There's a discussion on CWB in the second episode of the podcast here:
The white balance on that shot is pretty good. Was this adjusted in post?
Yep. I needed to get the shots out quickly. I'm considering myself lucky that auto-levels in PS gave me consistent results. I'm not banking on that, so I'm asking the question to improve for next time.
I use a combination of getting it right on camera using Custom WB with an EXPODISC and taking reference shots with a Lastolite EZBalance. If I am in a rush I just take a reference shots with a "Digital Gray Kard" which contains three reference cars Black, White and 18% Gray. This last one is good for Photoshop as you have control of telling PS the proper balance b/w all three dark, whites and midtones with the eyedropper.
If you have access to the ice before the event starts, have someone hold the ezybalance and take the reference shots and save them for the post processing. During post processing, you can make all the adjustments and nail the WB based on the reference shots.
I don't mind the post processing using Raw because I get the largest tolerance for aperture adjustments and better control of the image results.
