Black & White bails me out

Nikon D4, 70-200, ISO 12800, 1/1600, ƒ/2.8 with Custom White balance using ExpoDisc

I walked into the gym and I knew right away I was going to have problems. In an earlier post you will see a basketball shot in color that looks really good. To the untrained eye the gyms may look alike in their lighting, but they are far from it.

I talked about shooting under fluorescent lights earlier in a blog posting. You need to set your custom white balance while the shutter speed is below 1/100 to be sure the cycling of the lights don't affect the setting. Sodium Vapor lights, which these were are also cycling like the fluorescent lights.

The older the lights to more likely you will get color shifts and banding in the photos. One more factor that can affect the color shift is if the lights were not installed correctly. If some of the lights polarity is different from the others you will get banding.

While shooting this basketball game on this blog the minute I went above 1/100 I was getting color shift all through the image as you can see in the first photo. I was more interested in stopping the action than correct color.

By going to black and white I eliminate the color shifts in the photo. While I would prefer to have all the photos in color, unless you strobe the gym like I did here in this blog you really should just convert all the photos to black and white.

Nikon D4, 70-200, ISO 12800, 1/640, ƒ/2.8

Having the color off will make your work look amateurish. By eliminating the color you have now solved a problem with the color.

Nikon D4, 70-200, ISO 12800, 1/500, ƒ/2.8

Now please also note that while the ISO and the aperture never changed in all the photos, the shutter speed is different.

Here are my custom settings for this photo shoot from an earlier blog.  These are all for a Nikon D4

• Auto ISO Low 100 - High 12,800
• Minimum Shutter Speed set 1/2000
• Shutter only when pushing release
• Back button focusing
• Auto Focus 21 pts centered and locked