Moomoo48 wrote:
I take a lot of pictures of family at ice hockey rinks. 100% of the time Lightroom will help adjust pictures to a presentable level. I shot the attached in a poorly lite rink behind glass with a Nikon D500 and a Nikon AF-S 24-70 mm 1:2.8E lens. As normal I was in shutter priority mode speed in the case of this pix 1/500 and iso 1600.
ISO level is set for automatic.
Can’t figure out what happened and unfortunately I’m going back to the same rink this weekend.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I take a lot of pictures of family at ice hockey r... (
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Turn on your camera's Flicker Reduction feature.
The problem is the lights. They are fluorescent or sodium vapor, which cycle on and off rapidly. It's so fast, it isn't apparent to your eyes. But your camera will sure notice. I would guess that some of your images are fine, while others are underexposed like your example. That's because sometimes the lights happen to be "on" when the shutter is open, while other times they're "off".
Before Flicker Reduction, there were two ways to counteract the problem. One was to use a slow shutter speed so that they light would complete a full cycle while the shutter is open. That won't work for sports photos, though. You need a faster shutter speed to stop the action. So with sports photos the only way to counteract it in the past was to take lots and lots of extra shots, because some of them would be ruined with underexposure.
What Flicker Reduction does is detect the cycle of the lights and time the opening of the shutter to coincide with the peak output of the lights. I've been using Canon with the equivalent feature for several years now and it works very well. I see almost no underexposed images "under the lights" now. Before that features, I'd see exposure problems with about half of my images.... and a fairly high percentage were ruined.
The D500 and the D850 are the only Nikon DSLRs I'm aware of that have Flicker Reduction. All current Canon DSLRs have it (Canon calls it "Anti-Flicker"), except for the two most entry-level Rebel T7 (2000D) and EOS 4000D. I don't know about other brand DSLRs or mirrorless cameras.
I've seen Nikon's Flicker Reduction setup a couple different ways. One was simply enabled or disabled. Another example I saw was more complex... It had "off", "50"hz" (European), "60 hz" (N. American) and "Auto Detection" settings. If in N. America, you can use 60 hz, which is the alternating current cycle. If you're in Europe and some other parts of the world, you'll need to use 50 hz. If you're uncertain, just use the Auto Detection mode and the camera will time shutter release itself. (Canon's Anti-Flicker only has enabled/auto or disabled.)
You also might want to set a "Custom White Balance". Your user manual will tell you how. DO NOT use any of the white balance presets. Those are wrong far more often than they are right. Also DON'T set the color temp yourself. In most cases you'll have a difficult time getting close.... plus the color temp is only half the equation (the cyan/yellow axis). You also have to set color tint (the green/magenta axis... which is usually strongly skewed under fluorescent lighting). Auto white balance may work best, because any mixed types of lighting will cause different color temps and tints in different parts of the arena.
One solution is to shoot RAW... then you can adjust white balance after the fact more easily.
Hockey is difficult due to the glass surrounding the rink. Look for as clean a spot as possible and don't use flash (it will reflect off the glass and ruin your shot).
Auto ISO is fine, but it will probably be pretty high, in order to have a fast enough shutter speed to stop action.
Use a large aperture close to the glass. That will both keep the ISO as low as possible, as well as minimize anything on the plexiglass or any scratches. The plexiglass will be like a really poor quality filter in front of your lens, but there's not much you can do about it, unless you can get them to let you shoot from the penalty box or the team's box.