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coleygm
4th of October 2007 (Thu), 23:28
This may only be news to me, but recently upgraded from an XTi to a 40d. Today, shooting volleyball in an older gym with (come to find out) old flourescent lights, i noticed that my pictures were all coming out slightly different with a wierd color shift from pic to pic (see below)

211153 vs. 211154

I thought my shutter was bad and not real happy about it. I'd just shot a volleyball game the night before in another newer gym and evyerhting was great.

Come to find out (and thanks again to RABIDCOW & PIEQ314 of this forum) my new 40d's 6.5 fps coupled with 1/500th had found the frequency that the fluorescent lights cycled at causing the color shift. My XTi, which shot at 3.5 fps, never saw this.

I found the following off of the net concerning:

"Modern, quality fluorescent lights don't have this problem because they pulse thousands of times a second instead of 50 or 60 times. The older fixtures pulse at the speed of the power grid and the new "electronic" ballasts create their own frequency. I'm not even sure the older "magnetic" ballasts are up to code in this country anymore as industrial lighting has had to switch to more energy efficient tubes that generally use electronic ballasts. FYI, compact fluorescents pulse thousands of times a second (electronic ballast) so they should be fine for most applications."

If anyone has any other information on this...and/or thinks i do indeed have a camera problem...let me know. Otherwise, beware of fluorescent lights when shooting high fps and/or shutters.

dharmon
4th of October 2007 (Thu), 23:48
I also just bouht an 40d. have'nt yet sold the xti. I will be shooting gymnastics this weekend using both cams. I'm new to photography, so not sure how much help I'll be, but I'll let you know what kind of results I get.

NZDoug
4th of October 2007 (Thu), 23:55
I think there is different light sources with different color balances.
The gal has good tone, theres not to much you can do about it unless you want to process the image for each color bal, and blend the 2 to get as close as possible to neutral.

dmwierz
5th of October 2007 (Fri), 07:13
This was just discussed at length earlier this week.

It's not from different light sources with different colors, although this can happen. It's from the AC powered lights, and the fact that they are not always putting out the same color lighting throughout their 60 cycles-per-second cycling.

It's also not the result of fluorescent light, as incandescent lights will do the same thing.

Here's the best description I have found on the matter:

http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=20873