Photographers are concerned about a few things when they go to a new football stadium. Here are some comparisons between the older Georgia Dome and the new Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.
The light is, first of all, much more, even from one end of the field to the next. Unless you put lights in the end zone pointed straight at the area, it is impossible to make it as even as the middle of the field where some of the lights are in front of the action.
The color temperature in the Mercedes Benz is about 5400k with +8 magenta using Adobe Lightroom. Very close to daylight. In the Georgia Dome, the temperature was 4650K with +33 magenta making it closer to Fluorescent.
The other big difference is there was more of a flicker in the Georgia Dome with the lights. I didn’t detect any indication in the Mercedes Benz Stadium.
The complaints for those working the games in the new stadium are due to the size of the place. Under the stadium, behind each bench, are restaurants about the size of a football field, and outside of that is the tunnel to walk around with the locker rooms.
The press box is no longer the center field. It is in the corner. The photographer’s workroom is on the outside wall of the field-level tunnel.
Washington vs Auburn [NIKON D5, 120.0-300.0 mm ƒ/2.8, ISO 20000, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000, 35mm Equivalent=460mm]
You walk about double the distance to the field from the workrooms than you did in the older Georgia Dome.
I am noticing photographers are in better shape now and writers who decide to come down from the press box to the field.