Color shift from Canon 1D IV

[kbolin]

My sister took these shots and was asking why there is a color shift between these two shots?  You'll note shutter, aperture, ISO, white balance & tint are all the same.  These are straight in from import but to be certain pressed Reset in the Develop module.  Capture time on both images is 8:00:00pm.  She was using 200mm f/2.8 II

I'm scratching my head on this one.  Only explanation I can think of is the sensor hadn't recharged for the next shot?  Or A/D converter fouled up?

Ideas?

[Ken Bennett]

Your 1/500 sec shutter speed is at fault. The building has lamps that flicker on and off at high speed - they look continuous to the human eye, but they aren't. Very fast shutter speeds catch them at various points in the cycle between fully on and fully off, and of course they have different color output at those times (to make matters worse.) This is really common in large gyms, classrooms, etc.

Try shooting at 1/250, or even 1/200 to smooth things out. Worst case scenario is that they cycle at 60hz, so a 1/60 sec shutter is required, but most of the time 1/250 will be okay.

This is why serious sports photographers use strobes to light these venues. But that costs a lot of money and time.

[kbolin]

I'll pass that on to my sister.  I shoot outdoor wildlife & nature stuff so this isn't an issue I ever encounter.  :-)

[Ken Bennett]

Cool. I have to deal with this every single day. I'm constantly shooting under fluorescent light, and the flicker drives me *crazy*. In some buildings the maximum shutter speed is around 1/100 to avoid color shifts within the same frame. And I'm shooting people, and they, you know, move.

On the other hand, one joy of working at a school with a moderately big-time athletics program is that our basketball court is seriously lit. Plenty of light and no flicker.

[Brian Hirschfeld]

flickering halogen, its never a problem unless you have more then one light in an image, i.e if your shooting down the ice, then its going to be impossible or a lot of work to correct for two different white balances. However if they are like those two images, and they are shot with well any camera that shoots raw, like a 1D IV does, then you can simply change the white balance in post to anything you damn well please, just like any other image They happen and Gym's and Ice rinks and stuff like that, they can be very confusing and frustrating until you understand it and adjust ur shooting for it or at least check critical shots for it.