im going to be going to the ski resort near me for a competition this weekend. it will be at night on a welll lighted half pipe. what do you guys think i should set the white balance for it? should i do a custom or use one of the presets(if so which one?)
Depends what type of lights are used on the half pipe. I would experiment with custom. If you shoot with RAW you can always adjust later with batch processing. This is just what I have read and not from experience, so ya...
I have shot many outdoor snow-sports at night and I almost always just use Auto White Balance. (My Mk II's do a fantastic job with Auto WB; the 10D is pretty close behind, so the D. Rebel shouldn't be too far off.) Only set a custom WB if you can get access to the middle of the half-pipe and shoot a grey card to obtain your WB. Occasionally the snow can have a slight tint, so obtaining your WB from the snow is usually left as a last resort. Plus, you can easily correct JPEG white balance problems using the Curves function in Photoshop.
Also, shoot in manual mode if you’re comfortable with it, the different lights and competitor’s outfits will often throw off the meter and under/over expose the faces. Set your exposure to properly expose the faces and use your histogram to check, the screen is not an accurate way to judge exposure. Once you set your exposure, it will remain the same for the whole event (as it’s artificially lit).
thanks