Light Cycling Illistration

Shot a gymnastic meet last night. I posted these examples in another thread, but thought it might be more helpfull to make it's own thread. I had the fps set a 3 when I noticed the light cycling, so set it to 10fps to see what I would get. I've noticed this before shooting football, but nothing to this degree so figured I'd document it. Below are three set's to illustrate how fast these lights were cycling and to what degree.

All of the images were shot with a 1D Mark IV set at f/2.8, 1/500 and ISO of 8000. All images are SOC with the only exception of converting from RAW to jpg. This is another good example why I shoot RAW.

Enjoy:

Example #1:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …wrphotography/6​713954707/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …wrphotography/6​713950777/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …wrphotography/6​713948091/

Nice illustration. I'll try and do a series in our bball practice facility on campus. It has a very slow Red-Green-Red-Green cycle. Anything above 1/320 gets you the half green, half red deal, making post a nightmare. This is in a 4 year old multi-million dollar facility. I feel for you guys in the old HS gyms.

those are nice, i think you got it down

abruckse wrote in post #13719614
Nice illustration. I'll try and do a series in our bball practice facility on campus. It has a very slow Red-Green-Red-Green cycle. Anything above 1/320 gets you the half green, half red deal, making post a nightmare. This is in a 4 year old multi-million dollar facility. I feel for you guys in the old HS gyms.

That's the bad thing...this is only a 12 year old gym. I was rather surprised to see this. But then again I strobe everything I can so not sure which gyms do and do not have this issue.

welcome to what I call "christmas lights" lighting....one frame red, then blue, then green, then yellow, then white, then red.....

cstewart wrote in post #13726806
welcome to what I call "christmas lights" lighting....one frame red, then blue, then green, then yellow, then white, then red.....

Haha, i like that term.

Having the same issues with most of the roller hockey venues each weekend. Setting the correct WiBal for each frame is too time consuming. :-/

Great illustration. Hard situation to deal with for sure.

A newer gym might have more ambient light, but still won't have a consistent white balance if you are shooting at a shutter speed faster than 1/60th sec. Almost all gyms use lights that cycle at 60Mhz, meaning they cycle at 1/60th sec. It's not visible to the naked eye. However, if you use a shutter speed faster than 1/60th sec, you catch the light in mid cycle, which results in the above various color casts. Fire off a burst of 10 images at 1/60 sec and they will all have the same exact color balance. This obviously isn't practical for freezing action, but if you ever do posed pictures in a gym, 1/60th sec is the only shutter speed you should use. You will still have a color cast on the background, but it will be consistent, and is easily corrected in PS.