Difficult WB ? Im Stuck

[inmotion]

Photographing Indoor horse Sports
Starting 5-30 pm fin 11-00 pm
to start a mixture af natural and mercury vapour lights--I can get by at 4000 isofrom 8-30 on wards holy crap
the sun goes down-- wird colours on a MASSIVE mural on a back wall and side walls full of decorations
containing multicoloured LED's that flash on and off I finish the night at 20000iso approx
my question is that I dont seem to get a great result even altering channels individually
the natural colour of the dirt on the floor is quite brown
any thoughts?
jim PS bring on the D4
[urlhttps://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/421037_252053798211148_100002195908582_549395_436224100_n.jpg][/url]

[urlhttps://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/421037_252053798211148_100002195908582_549395_436224100_n.jpg][/url]

[Matt. K]

Get the skintones right as a priority. I've had similar problems and my solution.....process as black and white.

[inmotion]

Hi Matt good starting point just highlights in a studio shoot we control all stray light and use backdrops that dont throw a cast
jim

[ATJ]

Can you take a gray card along and shoot the gray card under the same conditions? You may need to take more than one through the night. You can then use the gray card shots in post processing to get the white balance correct.

[Matt. K]

If you don't have a gray card then take an elephant. Almost perfect 18% reflectance.
Seriously....take a gray card and do a custom WB preset. Also include a Kodak or Macbeth or similar colour control strip in the first frame to use as a reference. But that really is ugly lighting that you are working with and sometimes there's not a lot you can do with it. Sepia tone's looking good.

[inmotion]

I may try one or two in raw but qty precludes this
I set K and adjusted the temp 500 deg each shot and got nowhere near it so I think suck it up
and see what the D4 does with this light
the sad fact is that this is one of the brightest arenas around
cheers jim

[biggerry]

good luck with that..



maybe give us some exif data to work with too, the two images are pretty different and I would put down only half of teh issue as WB, super high iso and slight motion blur has not helped. Were either of teh images processed?

[PiroStitch]

Priority is always the skin tone. Based on that the colours of the environment will fall into place.

Try doing a selective desaturation of all yellow tones to see if that helps. As you desaturate, increase the saturation of the red or blue tones - needs to be a bit of trial and error to get it right.

[gstark]

The mural is irrelevant.

So too, by and large, is the subject matter. We're talking about wb and you need to have some control images that disregard the irrelevancies.

You are (or should be) concerned about a number of things, but not those.

The light source is the issue, and it's changeability is a concern. Andrew and Matt both suggested that you use a grey card, and given the reality of the situation that you're facing, that is ultimately the only solution that will work.

Shoot in raw - you will need to so that you can recast the wb in post, and as you sense the lighting changing, reshoot the grey card under the newer conditions.

The other thing that you need to be mindful of here is trying to maintain correct exposure. With poor lighting conditions, any under exposure instances will come back and bite you in the bum down the track.

[surenj]

You might need to gray card everyshot or locally edit every shot. Otherwise get friendly with the lighting people and bribe them.

[inmotion]

All good sugestions and welcome but we as photographers have limited access to the arena--I will try a grey card to see if it helps but may have to ask a steward to hold it for me
thanks jim

[surenj]

You could bribe the organisers to put up some gray cards around the arena...

Also you could potentially bribe them so you can gel up those lights into some sort of consistency...

[Mj]

Grey cards and all sounds great but possibly not practical under these circumstances.
My suggestion is to obviously focus on composition and exposure, probably set the WB to a set fingle point (i.e not on auto) and then work on the WB in post. First get the skin tones right and/or any over all cast and then using for example LR4 you can selectively adjust WB on other parts of the shot. The outcome needs to be a photo that is pleasing to the eye... if the murals in the back end up a little different to reality they dont really matter as they are artifical anyway... then of course noise and all that needs fixing.