Indoor White Balance -- Basketball Venue's

[prairiefire]

I just took my new D-3 to the Oak Ridge HS Gym in the Woodlands.

Looked up and saw what appeared to be tungsten lights. They were very bright. Took a test shot at Tungsten WB and was on the blue end. Click balanced on a grey card and came in around 4950. Click balanced on eye whites and came in at 5200.

The grey card was held at arms length and not carefully or evenly lit.

Here's my question: What are these lights? And, am I right in thinking that they are balanced for daylight?

I'm new to gym shooting. Next time I'll bring my Minolta Color meter. But, hoping all of you who have experience in this area can help out.

sjh

PS. I shot everything at tungsten and batch processed it all to 5200 in ACR. So, this isn't a big issue, I'm just curious.

[JPalmer]

Most gym lights pulse... it's imperceptible to the human eye but can radically change the white balance shifting from blue to red.

[Roy]

Originally Posted by JPalmer

Most gym lights pulse... it's imperceptible to the human eye but can radically change the white balance shifting from blue to red.

You just got a big AMEN !

[Shane Jennings]

My wife took pics at my son's game this morning (I coached), and I had to adjust almost all of them a little differently in post processing. I finally just used the dropper and picked a white t-shirt or sock/shoe in every picture. That worked better than pre-sets usually, but it was time consuming.

[Comanche]

Steve - I'll bet if you noticed that one frame had one color problem, and the very next frame, a different problem. As Jason said, its the pulsing light system, used to save electricity. As Shane said - figure on spending a little time in post work to get them right - and even then, its a problem. You will probably get some shots where the faces have good skin tone, and the legs will have a yellow cast. Frankly, I just shoot auto white balance.

Welcome to the fun world of gym shooting

[RightAngle]

I would suggest shooting in Auto WB. With my IIN I shoot all auto and then let LR fine tune them once i upload them. The auto isn't always dead on but I get much better results then putting one in fine tuned. The lights are all changing too quickly and too much in the gyms I'm at and so by setting one temperature I get far fewer than the camera trying to read it each time.

Granted I feel the IIN does an amazing job with WB (more so than any other camera I have used so I may have just gotten lucky) but still this seems to be the way to go.