For high-quality television production, it is of fundamental importance that player faces are exposed correctly with good illuminance so that facial characteristics and expressions can be observed clearly.
During a football match, the players’ positions and orientation will continually change, as will the camera viewpoint, therefore a football pitch is not expected to provide lighting for face modelling equivalent to that of a TV studio. However, it is possible to provide a consistent level of good illuminance conditions to ensure player face modelling is of good quality. For this, it is essential for the luminous flux to reach the pitch from the appropriate angle. If the incident light arrives from a steep angle the shadows cast upon the players’ faces (as shown in figure 1) are deep and produce dark eye and nose shadows.
When the incident light reaches the face from the correct angle, the illuminance conditions and resultant face modelling (as in figure 2) are good from the point of view of both TV broadcasters and spectator/viewers.
It is considered necessary for luminaires to be positioned in such a way that the minimum angle to the perpendicular of the pitch perimeter is 20˚ (the optimum angle is 25°–30°) to ensure that player face modelling is of a good standard.