wayne-03 Loc: Minnesota

In Minnesota everyone plays Hockey, today two of my nephew had to play each other. One on the red team and the other on the green team, all Hockey rinks in Minnesota have good lighting for Hockey but very poor lighting for photography.
Camera - Canon 5D Mark II
Len - 70/200 - 2.8
ISO - 3200
Shutter speed - 1/500
Aperture - 3.2

(Download)


(Download)


(Download)

rolf Loc: Kenora Ont.Canada

Good action shots.

waltchilds Loc: Central Florida

Wayne, these are all excellent shots. Well done.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Good action shots. However, the color balance and exposure are inconsistent.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Great shots. Thanks for sharing and also for sharing your camera settings.

Japakomom Loc: Originally from the Last Frontier

Can you help me understand - when you say the color balance and exposure are inconsistent, how are they inconsistent? What makes them inconsistent?
Thanks!

wayne-03 Loc: Minnesota

I was shooting in the TV mode (shutter speed priority). The lights in the arena were fluorescent and something else mixed. The quality and intensity of the light varied from place to place in the arena. I sat a custom white balance at the center of the arena and set my shutter speed to 1/500 to stop action, after that it was up to the camera. The aperture and white balance varied a little because of the lighting. Had I been shooting portraits I would have set a new exposure and custom white balance at each location, but for action sports that is just not possible. I shot in raw and processed in Photoshop. In the raw processor if you hold down the shift key and double click the white and black sliders, camera raw will automatically set the white and black points for the photograph. I did that, increased the clarity to 15, applied noise reduction and a lens correction.

rolf Loc: Kenora Ont.Canada

Look fine to me.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

If you put them side by side, you will see a slight variation in the brightness of the ice. There is an interesting problem here. If you match the brightness of the ice, then then uniforms may be off. Which should prevail, the ice or the uniforms? You can argue either way. Perhaps the ice because it takes up so much area or perhaps the uniforms because the guys are the subjects.

As for color balance, the differences in brightness may be throwing off my perception of the color balance. I am presuming the ice is white but it looks a bit gray. Fixing the brightness will, ugh, enlightening us on that point.

Regardless, the important thing is that the shots were done well with the action being frozen and the focus being acceptable. Accomplishments given the poor lighting.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Thanks for posting this information. You used Tv but say nothing about ISO. Fixed or variable? Using Tv is certainly valid but I use Av and fixed ISO. I know something is going to be bad: the focus, motion or noise. I rather risk the motion. Merely a matter of personal preference. No more or less than that.

How do you set color balance? I agree with you that it will vary across the ice because of the crummy lights and reflections from the arena.

I used to set my extremes like that. While they may make sense scientifically, I decided they did not make sense photographically. Too many "correct" pictures were simply off visually. This might explain why the brightness varies among your shots. I watch the histogram as I adjust the sliders until I have what strikes me as the "correct" brightness. If I have a series of shots, I synchronize their brightness visually. I use LR as my first stop but do not use the sync function because the brightness still varies enough that I still have to tweak them again to get the exposure consistent. The clarity tool is certainly an excellent touch.

wayne-03 Loc: Minnesota

If you look at my original post I listed the ISO at 3200 which is as high as I like to go with my camera.

I used an Expodisc to set the white balance.

As I said before, Hockey games move so fast that changing camera settings for each location is just not feasible in my opinion. I like to set my camera and then just worry about keeping up with the game.

I process in Photoshop and to be honest I did not make any adjustments to the brightness. I simply set the white and black points automatically and made sure the uniform colors looked correct.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I also use the Expodisc and understand fully the problem with uneven lighting. You have done the best you can except to adjust everything to match later in PS. You might want to reexamine how you adjust brightness. The black and white points are a bit subject.

birdpix Loc: South East Pennsylvania

Having been a rink rat for 45 years I can tell you that non-professional rink ice is often shades of gray and white. Nice shots!

acelow Loc: Alabama

Great shots. Lighting can always be a problem in a hockey rink. we have ice hockey here in the deep south..only you have to drive hour to go see it. I took some photos of the Alabama/Auburn iron cup last year using canon 5d mkiii with a sigma 70-200 2.8f zoom and shot some photos last month of the Columbus Cottonmouths/Louisiana Ice Gaters using a canon 40D(which i grabbed by mistake) and the same sigma lens. as a side note the starting goalie for Columbus was Shannon Szabados a two time Olympic gold medalist for team Canada

Alabama vs Auburn @ Pelham Civic Center 2014


Winning goal in overtime Columbus vs Louisiana


Shannon Szabados making a save against Louisiana

ivycreek Loc: North Dakota

nice shots. They look spot on to me. The lighting coverage in the rinks (unless your shooting at the X) is not consistent at most rinks so it will be different from area to area. The lights also cycle creating issues. If you ever get the chance to follow your nephews to Baudette take a burst of shots and you will be amazed at how the results go from blown out to severely underexposed in less than a second.