Cycle Lighting?

[nascarmaniac]

I was shooting some Junior AA in Airdrie recently and I had some lighting problems. I have heard mentioned cycle lighting, but I couldnt find anything on that. So I will post the two images that show my problem, and if someone can explain it too me, that would be amazing.

So here is my problem. These are both un-edited, only resized. You can see a hotish patch in the top right in the left photo, and a hotish spot in the top left in the right photo. Is that cycle lighting? What can I do to prevent this kind of thing from happening?

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8851/cyclelightingek9.jpg

Thanks for your time.

Covy

[dmwierz]

It's not called cycle lighting - this describes lights on two-wheeled vehicles. There have been no fewer than 6 threads on this topic in the past month alone, found via the search. Most people refer to this as Lighting Color Cycling, or some such term.

Here's the best technical discussion of this topic I have found:

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

There is no way to get around this phenomenon if you shoot using the arena lights. It will always be present and it always seems to hit you on the one frame you really want. Shooting RAW will let you recover more readily.

The only way to avoid it is to shoot with strobes or flash. If you do this, then your own artificial light will be the primary light source and you will overpower whatever color issues there may be with the mains-powered lighting.

Doing a custom white balance will not eliminate this problem (though a CWB is always a good idea when shooting indoors) regardless of what you hear or read.

[nascarmaniac]

Thanks for the info. I heard it mentioned as cycle lighting, but were all still learning everyday. I will jump on that discussion at sports shooter here now.

[tsaraleksi]

Be glad it's only the colors you have changing-- the worst lights cycle on and off as well as in color. You don't notice it until your frames go fine fine black fine fine black :(

[AdamLewis]

Its very easy to fix ( maybe not 100% fix, but enough that people will never tell unless theyre just overly anal about everything... )

Shooting in RAW or JPG ( It doesnt matter despite what people might say ) you can simply adjust the WB of the picture based off something you know is actually white in the picture.

For example, I just shot my schools Quarterfinal soccer game at night and the light color changes like that. All I did to fix it was open up curves in photoshop, hit the "select white point" dropper, and then click on something I knew was white ( a jersey number, a sock, a goal post, anything ). It may not be the ideal way to do it but for the small amount of time it takes to fix it, I believe there is no way that is more efficient. You may be able to get a better adjustment out of RAW, but I personally have never seen it.

[dmwierz]

Adam,

You may be able to get a better adjustment out of RAW, but I personally have never seen it.

You are correct regarding the ability to adjust WB in JPEG, but the adjustments available via ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) in PhotoShop are way more powerful and precise.

[AdamLewis]

Adam,



You are correct regarding the ability to adjust WB in JPEG, but the adjustments available via ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) in PhotoShop are way more powerful and precise.

Im sure they are. And Im sure Im probably not using it to its full potential, but Ive just never seen results from RAW that I couldnt duplicate close enough in JPG to make it worth the time and storage space to shoot in RAW. Plus I do mostly Sport/PJ work anyways -.-