Shooting raw part 2 - night

You know you have arrived when one of your pictures is on a pump clip! The latest product badged for us by the Melwood Beer Company featured two of our longer standing supporters.

In my previous post, I looked at saving pictures in raw format and processing lighting and exposure on the computer. Whilst I will use this for non sports pictures, I was not yet sure whether the benefit was worth the extra work for sports during the day. However, being used to stretching the best the camera has to offer in low light, I was keen to see the effect at night. With a lack of success in the FA competitions, we have not had many midweek games, so I was fortunate to have a quick opportunity to test with our game at home to Kendal Town.

As in the weekend's game, we started well with an early goal from Lloyd Dean as I was making my way round to the gasworks side.

Lloyd Dean

When I got the pictures home, the first thing I looked at was the white balance. In the shutter priority mode on the camera, I use the auto setting, which under floodlights imparts a slight yellow cast. There is a fluorescent setting, but whilst floodlights are gas discharge lamps, and like a domestic fluorescent light contain mercury, they also contain sodium, which explains the yellow cast. As with the daylight photos, it took a few attempts to get the setting right, but the advantage of a floodlit game is that the lighting is constant throughout.

Danny Flood

The real revelation came with the exposure. Because I use a consumer lens with a small maximum aperture, I have to slightly under expose the image to retain an acceptable shutter speed - 1/200s is the slowest we can get away with, with some movement blur in the players' hands and feet and in the ball.

The lighten shadows function in Photoshop Elements has a tendency to increase noise, particularly light grain on a dark background. Using the exposure function on the raw image allows lightening with much less increase in noise - and for that which remains, the noise reduction function is much more powerful than that on the camera (which should not be a surprise, the computer has more processing power).

Marcus Burgess

Amidst this technical detail, there was a game going on. Kendal equalised after about 20 minutes with a shot that hit the bar and bounced downwards. Observers nearer than me were confident it went in, but Jordan Connerton avoided a Russian linesman moment by putting the rebound in the net.

Rob Doran restored our lead a few minutes later.

Jordan Connerton restored parity for the visitors 20 minutes into the second half, and for the remaining time the spectators were treated to a game with a realistic chance of going either way up to the end, with a draw being a fair result.

We saw the first appearance this season by Antony Shinks, returning a break from playing and some time in the United States.

Antony Shinks

The game was also the 100th appearance by Phil Bannister, who made a welcome return to the club in pre season.

Phil Bannister

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 2 (Dean, Doran) Kendal Town 2.