Another Friday Night Lights game at Roswell High School’s Ray Manus Stadium. Roswell was up 49 – 0 by halftime, so I left early.

I am pleased with the dynamic range of the Nikon D5 for shooting at such a high ISO of 64000.

The files are suitable, from the highlights to the shadows with detail. The only place was in the shadows inside the helmets where no light shone.

Even in the end zone, when the quarterback looked up for his receiver, I got some great light inside the helmet.

I shot from the end zone, sitting on a small folding stool for all these photos. I was at the kneeling height, putting me about at the belt line of the players.

Once the sun went down, I took a custom white balance with the ExpoDisc.

The latest version of the ExpoDisc 2.0 comes with warming filters. They are slightly cyan in color and have different densities to let you pick how much you want to warm up your image. So without them, you get a pure 18% grey; by adding these, you warm up the photo.

You just put the warming gel in the front of the ExpoDisc and then take your reading. This way, you can keep consistent warming to all your photos.

So what should you do? I would advise always doing custom. If you shot it RAW, You can change it later using Adobe Lightroom.

To the left is the pull-down menu available in Adobe Lightroom if you shot it RAW. These are very similar to the presets on your camera.

Sometimes, the perfect custom white balance may not be your preference.

Presets in Nikon D5

Check your manual for your camera because this is for the Nikon D5. You can adjust using presets for white balance somewhere in your menu.

On my Nikon D5, in the menu for White Balance, you can choose up to five different presets for fluorescent. Also, there is a selection of sodium vapor and High temp. Mercury-vapor. I have found a significant problem trying this method; it isn’t easy to pick the right color because the monitor on the back of the camera isn’t that easy to see color in all situations.

Fluorescent lamps are manufactured to a chosen color by altering the mixture of phosphors inside the tube. Warm-white fluorescents have a color spectrum of 3000 K and are famous for residential lighting. Neutral-white fluorescents have a color spectrum of 3700 K. Cool-white fluorescents have a color spectrum of 4200 K and are renowned for office lighting. Daylight fluorescents have a color spectrum of 5000 K to 6500 K, bluish-white.

Note that on the Nikon D5, you also have a preset for those awful Mercury-vapor lights or the Sodium-vapor on the other end of the spectrum. Sometimes, I have found that I prefer one of the fluorescent settings under some of the newer mercury-vapor lights when using this system instead of the custom white balance.