I don't normally shoot sports but got a chance to cover a tennis tournament recently. The venue was indoors and although evenly lit the lights flickered pretty bad. Naked eye couldn't see it but the color temp shifted quite a bit from shot to shot.
What do you dedicated sports/action photogs do to counter act this?
Cycling lights are basically a PITA. Personally, I shoot in raw. Occasionally you get lucky with a subject where selecting a spot with the WB tool in LR does the trick. Usually it will come down to adjusting the temp in each frame plus possibly certain colors as well. You may discover there is a temp setting that gets you most of the way there and can apply that to several of them at once via LR. Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet solution.
Welcome to indoor sports photography . Seems like I spend more time getting the WB right on my son's gymnastics than time I spent shooting. Agree with Matt, shoot in RAW (or at least RAW and JPEG-and just edit the "keepers").
Could just take a few frames of a gray card at the beginning of the match. I tend to do this for soccer as the lights come on and then about every 15 minutes as it gets darker and the ISO climbs . . .probably not necessary, but it gives me something to do when the action is away from me.
mikekeating wrote:
Welcome to indoor sports photography . Seems like I spend more time getting the WB right on my son's gymnastics than time I spent shooting. Agree with Matt, shoot in RAW (or at least RAW and JPEG-and just edit the "keepers").
Could just take a few frames of a gray card at the beginning of the match. I tend to do this for soccer as the lights come on and then about every 15 minutes as it gets darker and the ISO climbs . . .probably not necessary, but it gives me something to do when the action is away from me....Show more →
I should have used a grey card. That would have helped a little bit.
I selected 600 frames out of 3800. This is going to take a while...
Perfect WB is over-rated. Adjust for getting the exposure nearly right. It's unlikely you'll need 600 prints, so only get the WB close and then tweak those that need it (get purchased, need print, etc.) and move along. It's unlikely you will recoup the time/money spent adjusting WB if you try to do 600. And if your WB is a little off, its unlikely anyone (outside of some fellow photogs), will notice and care. If you have peak action, emotion, faces and the ball in the frame, you are good.
I'm going to jump in here and make it short and sweet.
Passport Color Checker - create a profile in Lightroom, and apply color to all.
It's fast and easy peasy when dealing with flicker and changing venue lights. Otherwise I have a standard 12X12 collapsible white/gray panel on my belt bag. I custom WB with lights at high noon (not after startup or just coming on full strength) and I drop back and punt for the rest of the workflow.
First thing you want to do is set a manual white balance at the beginning of your shoot. If the lighting conditions change during the shoot, repeat the manual white balance as needed.
To to the manual white balance, here are a few tips:
Position your white balance target (grey / white card) as close to where you'll be shooting your subject and make it face the direction where you will be shooting from. Why? Because in lot of poorly lit places, the actual ratio of various lights (incandescent vs halogen vs neon vs HID) will change depending on where you are and where your subject if facing. For most sports this is not practical, so you just need to find the "best" location. Be careful not to do your white balance next to a video board or jumbotron...
The your shutter speed to 1/60. Why? Because in the USA the AC frequency is 1/60 second so this way your meter will average over a full cycle of the lights.
Do a few test shots after you did the manual WB to see if you are happy with the results. Since the LCD on your camera is most likely not color calibrated, this will really be based on experience. For example, I know that on my D4 a good white balance looks a little magenta on the camera LCD.
Now, this will NOT solve all the cycle problem. Why? Because if you shoot at anything less than 1/60th you'll catch some of the light during a part of the AC cycle that makes them cast a hue that will show on your camera. In my experience this usually shows as a weird hue cast in a small part of the image, like in the rafters where one specific bulb does the majority of the illumination. That been said, I have heard some horror stories where it shows on a regular basis on the whole frame. I think this is due to poor electrical design in the electrical supplies of the lights. Typically (at least in the US) a good electrician will try to balance the power consumption across the two phases, which means putting 1/2 of the lights on one phase and 1/2 on the other phase, thus, in addition of "balancing the phases" also *theoretically* cancelling some of the light variation due to the AC current. If this is not done and *all* the lights are on the same phase, then clearly you are most likely to catch the cycling.
Passport Color Checker is great for really fine color adjustment, but, unlike mentioned earlier in this tread, this will not help with the light flicker unless you put a Color Checker in every photo you shoot (and create a separate color profile for every photo).
Realistically, 99% of the editors I work with, and for sure every parent I shoot for, don't care if the hue of their team jersey isn't spot on... In any case, they wouldn't know since their monitors (or printer) aren't calibrated. So... in the end, from a white balance perspective you just need to get it into the ballpark! (all the more true if you are not using a high quality monitor that you regular color calibrate).
Now, if you are shooting commercial for a sponsor (or maybe for a school poster and the editor knows something about color chain), that's a different game (!), but then, you'd probably wouldn't be using crappy stadium lighting in the first place!
It doesn't get talked about a lot but the anti-flicker tech built into the 7D MKII is amazing when you need it. Almost magical how it minimizes the effects of cycling lights.
boomanbb wrote:
It doesn't get talked about a lot but the anti-flicker tech built into the 7D MKII is amazing when you need it. Almost magical how it minimizes the effects of cycling lights.
Ben
Whao! I didn't know Canon had that (I wish Nikon had it). Read more about it here. Thanks for pointing that out.
Depending on the gym or field, time of season, or even how long the lights were turned on before you start shooting there is one guarantee... light WILL change color.
Shooting a color checker, grey card, or expo disc will really only apply to a few minutes before and after of that image in 99.998% of the cases because as I mentioned above, as the lights heat up they get brighter until they hit their peak. Distance age of bulb time of cycle compared to other poles all make the difference in color shift. Indoors that's great as long as they don't peak after the game is over.
Outdoor... as the sun sets and the lights turn on, you have decreasing natural light and increasing artificial light. That light is constantly changing color... literally by the second.
Even in the late fall, when games start after sunset, they change intensity and color as they heat up. We have a field that is almost 3 stop different from the beginning of the game to the end of the 3rd quarter.
Guy Rhodes animated gif that lets you see the cycle of the lights in the ceiling (not the color shift): http://www.guyrhodes.com/photo/flicker_lapse.gif
Look at the little boy dribbling the ball in the series and you can see how fast the lights cycle in their "zones".
To add, this from Guy:
"I've been to football stadiums, however, where entire poles of lights are on the same phase (meaning they all flicker at the same time), leaving entire percentages of the field in near darkness at the "bottom" of the flicker when shot in a burst, depending on how the lights are focused."
I have a few venues like this. We have a football field that is near black in one corner with one of their poles wired this way and two gyms like this. It's great fun.
Too bad you can't strobe tennis..... I shoot a lot of high school basketball & football for Maxpreps. Depending on who your client is, you can find a shot that's well lit and color correct for it... Newspaper photographers IMHO have it a tad easier because they don't need as many "keepers" as those of us who try to get as many photos of all the players. They can fix the shot they run in color or just run a B&W. That's why I strobe basketball when I can. There just aren't enough lightheads to even out the lights. Same with most high school football venues here in NorCal. Even though I normally shoot with a 1DX (@10K ISO), it doesn't help cycling lights (So I add a "puff" of flash to balance the color/fill, works great). As for the 7D2's anti flicker, although it does help some... it's not a fix-all. It helps in venues where you have a lot of lightheads, but in the places I shoot, there just aren't enough heads to even out the light to allow the anti flicker to work as advertised.
I used to have problems.
I now turn on Live View, set the Kelvin color temp so the scene looks correct.
Keep the camera on Manual, SS1/1000, F2.8, Auto ISO and it's so much better.
I still have a few dark corners of the gym but after marking my keepers in Lightroom
I only have to tweak a few picks.
This is on a Canon 1DX.
Good Luck, lots of useful info from the other members for you.
Hello I'm coming late this post but it's been very informative so far. There is one thing I don't seem to understand and that is why two shots in a burst can have different colours despite having been set to identical WB setting in LR5. It seems as though in AWB the camera isn't able to keep up registering the fast changing colours within the cycle, or maybe it's that the colour changes between mirror up and first curtain?
I have a 1Dx at my disposal for a week and I've tried three different local youth indoor venues. Two of them were trouble free but in the third I only had sequences with completely different colours and identical WB settings. In this last venue I was able to shoot 1/2000 f/2.8 ISO25600. I did not try other shutter speeds like 1/1250 or 1/1000.
Additionally, I would be very interested to know how good the anti flicker mode in the 7D2 really is. Bryan at TDP says 98% reliable in 350 images. thebmrust above shows an example where it failed. If it is really 90%+ accurate then I would add this feature to my list of decisive factors in favour of waiting until the 1Dx2 arrives.
Hi Paul, thanks for your reply. Strobes are a last straw for me and mostly not allowed. Do you really use them much indoors? I'd be surprised you get permission.
Also, I want to shoot action shots at high fps. I am not very experienced. Could you point me to some source or write up on how to use strobes at indoors sports venues?
Ralph Thompson wrote:
Too bad you can't strobe tennis..... I shoot a lot of high school basketball & football for Maxpreps. Depending on who your client is, you can find a shot that's well lit and color correct for it... Newspaper photographers IMHO have it a tad easier because they don't need as many "keepers" as those of us who try to get as many photos of all the players. They can fix the shot they run in color or just run a B&W. That's why I strobe basketball when I can. There just aren't enough lightheads to even out the lights. Same with most high school football venues here in NorCal. Even though I normally shoot with a 1DX (@10K ISO), it doesn't help cycling lights (So I add a "puff" of flash to balance the color/fill, works great). As for the 7D2's anti flicker, although it does help some... it's not a fix-all. It helps in venues where you have a lot of lightheads, but in the places I shoot, there just aren't enough heads to even out the light to allow the anti flicker to work as advertised....Show more →
I've had the same experience with the 7d2 anti-flicker mode. Doesn't work as advertised at the venues around here.
I recently shot in a venue with brand new LED lighting, and it was cycling like crazy! Fortunately only the intensity was changing and not the color temperature. I wonder how the anti-flicker mode of the 7D2 (and forthcoming 1DX2) would work there.
. Seems like I spend more time getting the WB right on my son's gymnastics than time I spent shooting. Agree with Matt, shoot in RAW (or at least RAW and JPEG-and just edit the "keepers").