humbled indeed. i think a weak arena strobe might be possible. a weak (ie. non-blinding) flash firing away from the court and bouncing off the ceiling that will cure both WB as well as shutter speed. but historically, strobes are not allowed in badminton events around the world, unlike american football or basketball where they are used quite frequently.
Was this taken on a tripod with a cable release? If no, using these two accessories will save you at least one stop, perhaps two. Come to think of it, are badminton halls lighted by fluorescent lamps/tubes? Most of the halls that I have seen and played in seem to use high intensity discharge lamps. If these lamps, which include high pressure sodium vapor, metal halide, and mercury vapor, are used then you can increase your shuttle speed to 1/125. With tripod (the heavier the better), cable release, and a custom WB gray card, taking badminton photos with uniform colour balance should not be difficult. Personally I am surprised to hear that the gray card is seldom used, and if used only as an exposure tool. I used to carry various sizes of gray cards with me almost every time I took pictures. I often used it as a colour balance aid, besides using it to read exposure values, when critical colour matching and balance is required. Every gray card has a white card on the reverse side, but I almost never used this side.
I am certain that if you use a gray card and set the shuttle to 1/100 or slower you should get consistent results. It looks like the light source is fluorescent and that 1/100 shuttle speed is acceptable. If the light source is high intensity discharge lamps you will get better results at 1/100 and you might want to push for 1/200 or 1/250. Using a gray card for your first picture will even be better.
Yes, I have taken badminton photos before, actually for a long time. I have also stopped taking photos for quite some time.
ic, although your suggestion of using a slow shutter speed may solve the flourecent flickering problem we have here, but it is too slow to capture the action in a badminton game. Totally unusable, minimum shutter speed that i used was 1/250s i push up to 1/1000 @ ISO 1600 f2.8
for a stationary object. perhaps! nothing to surprise at all. everyone has his/her own way to take photos. thanks for telling me yours. you mean that grey card will appear in all your pictures? would you mind telling me how to deal with critical colour matching and balance with that little grey card uncle taneepak? thanks very much.
This expodisc is just an expensive way that I had mentioned earlier as one of two ways to cutomize your digital camera's white balance. The words "White Balance" is a misnomer, because if you set your WB to white you are in deep trouble. The White Balance is for setting a reference to a gray card. You can costomize your WB in your digital camera by two ways with a gray card: 1. Take a first picture of your gray card-make sure the gray card fills up the whole picture-under the same illumination of the scene you are going to shoot in and use this to set your white balance. Having set your White Balance now you can start shooting for as long as the light conditions remain the same. The espodisc does exactly the same thing but at a cost. 2. You place a large gray card (8 x10 inches) somewhere in the scene, probably somewhere in the corner of the picture. You then zoom in and take a shot of the gray card to set your White Balance. Having White Balanced your WB with the reference gray card you shoot RAW for best results. If the lighting conditions change, like when you are going to another badminton hall, you have to reset your gray card White Balance again. After the shoot you just use RAW Conversion Software and RAWShoot to perfectly adjust for all the captures that were shot under the same lighting conditions. FYI, Kodak lists the following 4 uses of their Gray Card: 1. To determine Color Balance 2. To determine Exposure. This is very useful if you want to take a picture of a white cat in a sea of white snow. 3. To determine Lighting Ratios 4. To determine Exposure for Close-Up and Copying Work In every gray card there is a white side, which should not be used for the above 4 uses. The white side (White Balance?) is to compare densities of prints, i.e. the reproduction of the white side of the gray card should be 0.04 in density, the gray side of the gray card 0.74 in density. Having you seen top notch professionals taking portrait of a subject with the subject holding an 8 x 10 inch gray card? This is color balancing for demanding clients.
Even without the use of a gray card you can still take acceptable badminton pictures under fluorescent lighting by presetting your camera's WB to "fluorescent" and use a shuttle speed of no shorter than 1/125 sec. Hasseblad suggests max 1/125 or slower. Kodak is more conservative, suggesting 1/60 sec or slower for fluorescent or 1/124 sec for High Intensity Discharge Lamp. But nothing beats the humble Gray Card.
Can I ask, if you shoot in RAW, do you still need to set the white balance? I thought it was adjusted in postprocessing
no you don't. you can pretty much just shoot away with any WB setting. but at the end you still need a reference. so somewhere during the time, you need to shoot a WB card to obtain the reference. modern WB cards are white, and the most accurate ones are made under very tight tolerances which guarantee to be pure white. i have been considering getting one but the good ones cost upwards of US$60...
even though with raw shooting. i will set the wb before taking any picture. if u do that. the postprocessing job will be less complicated. ideally, it's better to have a reference color. but in digitally photography. a reference color seems to be less important. unless your monitor is perfectly calibrated. for professionals like those who tune pictures for magazines or newspapers. somehow, they just don't really care about the color on their screen. all they need are those C, M, Y, K values from the photoshop info window.
so far........ i do not see a solution to overcome the inconsistent WB of flourecent lighting for shooting badminton. means post processing is the only solution
I am not insisted in using AWB, in fact, I was very satisfied with using fluorescent wb of 30D for my China Open photo. But I am not very skillful in manual setting the wb other than the preset types. I found the wb meaurement besides the court is not as good as AWB for the player who were standing in the court. Is it odd to put the WB card inside the court? As for last experience in taking Youth badminton tournament in Choi Hung Road Sport Centre, it was not easy and time consuming for me to change the wb measurment in 8 different wb courts. I usually use A mode. Moreover, I found the post processing in PS of color temperature is more difficult for a manual setting wb than AWB type. Below are my simple field test results done in Oct 06. D70s-AWB Test 1: stable wb & performed well in the first 100 photos, then fluctuated seriously in following 120 photos. Test 2: stable wb & performed well in the first 30 photos, then fluctuated seriously in the following 250 photos D70s-Preset WB stable wb in all 62 photos 30D-AWB stable & performed well in 336 files 30D-fluorescent wb stable in 2000 photos 20D-tungsten wb fluctuate in 87 photos (manual setting: ISO 1000, 1/320, F/2.5). Not sure the problems were contributed to flickering of lighting or instability of wb. Pls see below photos. My Conclusion: 30D is the best among these 3 cameras. I think the instability is due to the quality of the camera but not the setting of AWB itself.
I believed modern wb cards are white. I checked from manual of D70s & 30D, both recommend to use white or gray for the manual wb setting.
it depends which problem you are having. so far there are two problems: 1) if you use auto WB and the WB detected is inconsistent between frames. solution: use fixed WB. either use a WB card to get a proper white balance on camera, or if you shoot raw, shoot the WB card and then correct it in your raw processing program. 2) if you are having inconsistent WB banding within the same photo like the one red00ecstrat posted, then there is no solution other than painfully adjust it during post processing. this is a limitation of the nature of the light and fast shutter speed require for badminton and there is no way around it.
Anita, those pictures were definately ruined by fluorescent light flickering. unfortunately, it is still incurable!
