Help please - what's wrong here?

Jim_robinson wrote:

I'm using the R6 to take marching band pictures, and usually don't shoot completely wide open, though close to it. The picture below was taken on an R6, using a RF70-200 set at 153mm, F2.8, SS 800, ISO 12800. THe espose in different across the picture in a way I haven't seen before, and several pictures came out the same. Is it due to the uneven stadium lighting? I can improve it a bit change WB and doing some edits, but it is still visible. Some other pics are completely fine, same settings. I'd appreciate any input on what I might have done wrong here. Thanks!

Most stadium and gym lighting is terrible. Not only is it non-uniform, it has a lousy spectrum with some colors missing altogether. They are designed for brightness per Watt and not a uniform color spectrum. This can throw auto-white balancing off. Additionally, in your picture, there are a lot of blue and green primary colors and not much that is "natural."

Still, the main problem is that the face of the girl in the center is very overexposed. Also easy to do with so much black in the background.

When I am faced with a weird color problem, I try and find a "gray card" somewhere in the image to click on to adjust the white balance. Often black will work as it reflects a little of the light, but In this case, I click on the gray part of the person's uniform on the far right with the red stripe. I then change the curve to get the girl in the center's exposure in the 128-range (very approximately). Below is the curves applied.

Next is my version of the corrected image:

There is a lot more that could be done, starting with the RAW/cRAW file to pull down the highlights and up the shadows to make the picture look better. Stadium lighting is also very harsh/contrasty.

Below I used the "Raw Tools" filter in Photoshop (it gives you the same tools but on the post-RAW file -- thus not as good). I found the picture was about 1 stop overexposed, and I brought the Highlights down by 20 and up the shadows by 100 (on whatever scale photoshop uses). I then fudged the Green curve down and the blue curve up based on the prior attempt. This will help reduce the harshness of the lighting, and you can see some details in the uniforms, the people in the stands, and even the trees that were black in the original picture. I probably brought the green down a little too much, but hopefully, it gives you the idea.

These are all quick tests, and I'm sure they can be done better, particularly starting with the RAW/cRAW files.