hockey lights flicker

three shots, separated by 1/8 second (just as fast as my 1D...N will go). Exposure in M mode, manual (custom) white balance. only post-processing was crop, copy & paste.

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nice! i'm shooting hockey tomorrow so we'll see how that goes for me.. hopefully as well as your hockey stuff

I have a 20D and find the same thing as you when shooting several in a row, some are fine and others dark. It must be the way the lights work. By the way, nice shots!

Yup, certain types of indoor lighting do strobe. If you're unlucky you'll catch them in their "off" period and get underexposed images.

Unfortunately it's normal thing. At least with indoor halls which have a bit cheaper lights. Sometimes you can add another issue to this one, and that is changing light temperature. So you can imagine how much fun it is to shoot in small halls and gyms

I think the official term is "cycling", and it's even seen in large stadiums. As long as the lights are on the same power supply (AKA grid), they will cycle on and off at the most in-opportune times. When you are shooting at high shutter speeds, and high burst speeds, you will inevitably catch a frame or two where the light is an odd color or a stop or more darker.

Check these out:

http://www.sportsshoot​er.com …ge_display.html​?tid=20873
http://www.sportsshoot​er.com …ge_display.html​?tid=14346
http://www.sportsshoot​er.com …display.html?ti​d=17333#12

Annoying, isn't it?

Dennis
http://www.pbase.com/d​mwierz45/sports_shots

Dennis I would say it depends on type of light, but I have no idea about electricity (except that I know it can kill you if you touch it too much ) so I might be technicaly wrong, but in personal experience I'm not that far off... I think
When shooting for example last few basketball Euroleague matches, I never noticed these problems. But light in these matches is something completely different then light in same arena, but for lower category matches. So maybe I'm just lucky that I didn't hit "right" timing, but with light cycling, which is happening in around 1/120sec cycles (if I remember right), I'm pretty sure I should hit at least few such problematic moments in last few matches.

primoz wrote in post #2246993
Dennis I would say it depends on type of light, but I have no idea about electricity (except that I know it can kill you if you touch it too much ) so I might be technicaly wrong, but in personal experience I'm not that far off... I think
When shooting for example last few basketball Euroleague matches, I never noticed these problems. But light in these matches is something completely different then light in same arena, but for lower category matches. So maybe I'm just lucky that I didn't hit "right" timing, but with light cycling, which is happening in around 1/120sec cycles (if I remember right), I'm pretty sure I should hit at least few such problematic moments in last few matches.

Primoz,

I think you can actually FORCE it to happen (or at least increase the likliehood) by shooting at 1/60th. I seem to remember having a fellow instruct me to shoot a grey card at 1/60th and use this image as my custom white balance frame during an indoor basketball tournament I was shooting for him once. But maybe I'm remembering wrong. Try these steps:


1.To set a Custom White Balance in an arena or indoor court, I set my WB setting to AWB (the manuals say any setting will work, but I use AWB) and close the lens until I get a reading of 1/60th. This is so I get an average reading because of the cycling of the lights. I switch my lense to MF and set the lens to infinity. Now I take a picture of the gray card holding it so the card fills the entire frame at about an arm's length, with the light from the arena completely illuminating the card.

2. Set the lens back to AF.

3. Set the camera's WB to Custom WB, and using the Menu, select the image you just shot.

4. Set the camera to Manual and set aperture, ISO and shutter speed to the settings however you determine them (suggest manual with a handheld light meter.

Take some test shots and look at your histogram. It should look pretty darn good. You may want to tweak your shutter speed slightly depending on the color of the uniforms, etc

Dennis