Of course! Of course you have to do color correction on all the different cameras pointed from different angles at a sports event.
I absolutely love reading about hard problems that are invisible to most people.
I absolutely love reading about hard problems that are invisible to most people.
If you want the green of the grass on all the pylon cameras to match your main production cameras, adjustments are a must. And with outdoor stadiums, this is a constant task—lighting conditions change throughout the day, even when a cloud moves across the sky. When night falls, video engineers are working non-stop to keep everything perfectly aligned with the main cameras.
The usual technique was to start by holding up a color card on the stage/floor then use a vectorscope[1] and get all the dots to line up in the right place. Then with a waveform monitor for exposure. During the event, there would be fine tuning by eye, or as things drifted out of line.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectorscope#/media/File:PAL_Ve...
PS: You can also see modern vectorscope / waveform monitor images in this photo from the cyanview blog. Look for the black and white X-ray looking things on the screens. https://www.cyanview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221006...