Today I shot the first half of my first "show." It was a CFF event.

The lighting was horrible and no flash allowed. I was using my 50mm 1.4 and my 85mm 1.4 on two D3 bodies.

It is amazing how the lighting in this place changes. I was shooting 3-4 frame bursts, and it was surprised to see that all 3-4 images in one burst could come out different colors. Looking at my thumbnails in Lightroom reminds me of a Skittles commercial; you know, "Taste the rainbow."

All in all, I'm looking at about a 30% keeper rate if I look at these from a more documentary perspective than a creative / arty perspective.

I'm not real pleased with myself right now, but I'll be shooting round two of the same event tomorrow. Right now, I need to get about 400 images tweaked and online for the competitors to view.

Here's a rainbow I saw this evening

Is it this varied with a custom white balance??

I'll be finding that out tomorrow. My understanding of a custom white balance is that it is only good if the lighting remains constant, but I could be wrong. I've never used anything but auto white balance since I shoot raw.

Its a whole lot easier to get it right in camera, even if you are shooting raw. Do a custom white balance and I bet your results will be a lot more consistent

BUMMER! I feel your pain, what a downer, it sure adds a huge amount of labor to the process! On the bright side, you have some images to work with! It even looks like your exposure was changing too, is that true?

I'll bet you’re shooting fluorescent vapor lights, they are NOT a constant temperature and your d3 is picking up the variation and setting a WB based on the "flicker" of the light spectrum. Not much you can do but set try a custom WB on a white shirt or white card and see if that works. I think you can also program some custom white balance images in the camera and use those for a reference later in PP.

If you can’t use a flash, what about portable floods? I know it's a bit late for that, but this might be a place where you need more constant lighting. It's an added cost but maybe renting some good floods in the future and setting them up prior to the shoot is the answer. You may have to get the help from the building supervisor to hang the lights, but it would do the trick. . .

I feel for you though, this is a tough situation.

Thanks Tony,

I actually asked about floods, and they said no because some of the dogs may not tolerate it.

Some of the lights were brighter than others and the lighting was really uneven so the ring was almost "dappled." Most of my good shots came from one bright spot in the corner farthest from me, so today I'm taking a longer lens on one camera and using a higher ISO to make up for the aperture change.

I was also switching manually between 1/250 and 1/500 depending on how fast the dogs were going at the moment. I may experiment with shutter priority today instead of manual.

I did manage to arrange some time after the competition today to do some flash shots of parts of routines. Since they don't count at that point, it's OK if the flash distracts a bit.

I'm also doing portraits once the event is over, so things will look up I'm sure.

OK, I'm back from a crazy day.

I set a custom white balance off of a card, but looking at the back of the camera I was pretty sure I was still getting color variations. Looking at the thumbs as they are downloading, I sure did.

Other than that though, I think the day turned out better for event photos and I did quite a few sittings afterward.

It's been a stressful day though. My wife called about half way through the event and said she thought one of our dogs had a stroke. Turns out not to be anything so serious, but it was tough going for a few hours.

Once I sort through all the pics, I'll post some favorites. I was really impressed by the whole thing.

Hey Jim,

I am glad that things were able to work out for you. It is a h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e feeling when you don't think things are working out the way that they should. My experience has typically been that as bad as I think it possibly can be, that it usually works out OK. This is a situation where I am sure you were very happy that you were shooting raw. The skittles can be fixed, even if it requires a bit of work.

James

Thanks Jim,

Yes, at the end of day one I was wishing I hadn't taken the job. By the end of day two, things were looking up. A week after the fact and I'm pretty pleased overall.

Funny, I've had HUGE sales volume from that little event and I'm getting behind on the processing. I guess there are worse problems to have.