That is an interesting problem. Fluorescent lights cycle in brightness. A quick check of the general problem reveals that one needs to use a shutter speed that is equal to or slower than the cycle time. In the US that will be 1/60 of a second. Specific advice that I read is that the that shutter speeds should be whole multiples of the cycle time. Not sure if that is clear, but what is meant is that you should try either 1/60 (exposes for 1 cycle) or 1/30 (exposes for 2 cycles) or 1/15. If you shoot at other shutter speeds then different pictures come out with different exposures and colors since they are made under different amounts of ambient light.
I thought that the use of flash (bounce flash if possible) should also help to soften and fill in shadows.
Not sure if skin color matters here, so can't offer anything on that. But it might turn out to be easier since pale skin poses real challenges with strange color castes, especially under some fluorescent lights, and the tendency to show capillaries under the skin when shooting with a flash.

Sometimes I wish there was a form to fill out- a template or questionnaire that folks have to complete in order to receive information, tips, instructions or suggestions on this forum. So many of the questions are "guessing games", puzzles and require all kinds deductive reasoning and detective work on the part of all the well-meaning and knowledgeable folks that attempt to provide answers with highly technical content. Half the time the OPs never return with any hints, clues, feedback or further information. Folks complain about issues with their pictures and never post an example in proper downloaded form.

In this thread- as an example- "Settings"? What does that mean? The camera's automatic modes, the f/stop and/or shutter speed, the ISO setting, the AF mode? There is no universal setting for any kind of lighting or job, especially if no specific details are supplied. "Picture in a Cafeteria"? Are they gonna be action or activity shots? Perhaps they are portraits or groups to be made or headshots where the cafeteria is just used as a convenient gathering place? How old are the subjects- are they active, can the stay still, take instructions? 1/60 or 1/125 sec is OK to compensate for flicker, that is, if the subjectsare not dancing around the room!

What equipment does the OP have at his or her disposal?

"Subjects with dark skin"? What is the concern; exposure, aesthetics, detail, texture? So...folks here are talking about specular highlights, however, these highlights are usually generated by off-axis lighting that carefully feathered which is not very likely to be naturally occurring in overhead fluorescent light- perhaps not even with bounce flash to any great extent so if the light is flat or even generated by on-camera direct flash, correct exposure to render shadow detail is required.

If the OP is not familiar with basic "settings" I doubt if he or she is gonna employ color calibration targets and the accompanying analysis and calibration.

Fluorescent lighting was never a whole bunch of good fun in color photography, especially in the film era. It's a bit easier nowadays with digital technology and post-processing actions. As others have alluded to, however, this lighting in public spaces is usually a dog's breakfast of mixed types, old tubes, and faulty ballasts. Not all of the tubes or lamps have the same degree of the discontinuous spectrum. One can set the white balance for the existing light and fill in with flash with a "green" filter but how green does that filter need to be- that would be subject to testing and having a supply of CC filter for the flash on hand. With some kinds of fluorescent lighting, I find that a simple "daylight" WB setting is best with a good old FLD filter in the lens but this would not usually work well for candid shots.

Besides- if that school is local and accessible, the OP can get in there in advance and run a few tests- post them and get specific instructions.

Anybody wanna design a form- asking for equipment in use, nature of the "job", what pictures are for, how will the be displayed? How big or small etc? There can be "boxes" to tick off at the top of the form: [] This is a real sincere question. [] This is a rhetorical question. [] I just wanna start a dispute because that is fun. []I am a real person. []I am a Troll.

Sometimes I wish there was a form to fill out- a template or questionnaire that folks have to complete in order to receive information, tips, instructions or suggestions on this forum. So many of the questions are "guessing games", puzzles and require all kinds deductive reasoning and detective work on the part of all the well-meaning and knowledgeable folks that attempt to provide answers with highly technical content. Half the time the OPs never return with any hints, clues, feedback or further information. Folks complain about issues with their pictures and never post an example in proper downloaded form.

In this thread- as an example- "Settings"? What does that mean? The camera's automatic modes, the f/stop and/or shutter speed, the ISO setting, the AF mode? There is no universal setting for any kind of lighting or job, especially if no specific details are supplied. "Picture in a Cafeteria"? Are they gonna be action or activity shots? Perhaps they are portraits or groups to be made or headshots where the cafeteria is just used as a convenient gathering place? How old are the subjects- are they active, can the stay still, take instructions? 1/60 or 1/125 sec is OK to compensate for flicker, that is, if the subjectsare not dancing around the room!

What equipment does the OP have at his or her disposal?

"Subjects with dark skin"? What is the concern; exposure, aesthetics, detail, texture? So...folks here are talking about specular highlights, however, these highlights are usually generated by off-axis lighting that carefully feathered which is not very likely to be naturally occurring in overhead fluorescent light- perhaps not even with bounce flash to any great extent so if the light is flat or even generated by on-camera direct flash, correct exposure to render shadow detail is required.

If the OP is not familiar with basic "settings" I doubt if he or she is gonna employ color calibration targets and the accompanying analysis and calibration.

Fluorescent lighting was never a whole bunch of good fun in color photography, especially in the film era. It's a bit easier nowadays with digital technology and post-processing actions. As others have alluded to, however, this lighting in public spaces is usually a dog's breakfast of mixed types, old tubes, and faulty ballasts. Not all of the tubes or lamps have the same degree of the discontinuous spectrum. One can set the white balance for the existing light and fill in with flash with a "green" filter but how green does that filter need to be- that would be subject to testing and having a supply of CC filter for the flash on hand. With some kinds of fluorescent lighting, I find that a simple "daylight" WB setting is best with a good old FLD filter in the lens but this would not usually work well for candid shots.

Besides- if that school is local and accessible, the OP can get in there in advance and run a few tests- post them and get specific instructions.

Anybody wanna design a form- asking for equipment in use, nature of the "job", what pictures are for, how will the be displayed? How big or small etc? There can be "boxes" to tick off at the top of the form: [] This is a real sincere question. [] This is a rhetorical question. [] I just wanna start a dispute because that is fun. []I am a real person. []I am a Troll.

Thank you for your wonderfully complete answer. I have been called upon to shoot my congregation in the auditorium under the conditions you have covered...so very timely answer! I was also one of the prima Donna yearbook advisors for 9 years. Our yearbook won awards, but not at first. Our senior photography studio, Bryn Alan, based in Tampa, also had a studio in nearby Orlando. They were wonderful to work with and always bent over backwards to give us the pictures we needed. Just saying that to say how much we advisors appreciate the talent and hard work the professionals bring to the school. They shot candids, classrooms, clubs, sports, teams, etc. and were amazing to work with. We were a road school, so, on portrait days, they would bring their portable studio set up to the school and do the two thousand or so underclassmen on a couple of days. We rarely had very many retakes. Once, our principal insisted on using a different studio for the underclass portraits. The black kids were so dark they were practically unusable; it wasn’t hard to convince him to switch back. Thanks for the detailed post and very useful information!

True, but only certain cameras have this feature:

Nikon DSLRs: D500 and D850 are the only models I know for sure have it.

Canon DSLRs: all current models have it except the most entry-level Rebel T7/EOS 1500D and EOS 4000D.

I think Nikon Z-series mirrorless and Canon R-series mirrorless cameras have it, too... but Canon M-series mirrorless don't.

I don't know if you'll find that feature on any Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Fujifilm, Panasonic, etc.

I use a pair of 7D Mark II, introduced in 2014 and the first Canon models to have the Anti-Flicker feature. It works very well under any sort of lighting that cycles the way fluorescent does.

The problem with that lighting is that it cycles on and off rapidly... 60 cycles per second in N. America... 50 cycles per second in other parts of the world.

That cycling is so fast that we usually don't notice it with our eyes. But the faster shutter speeds of our cameras sure capture it! Without anti-flicker, under fluorescent and similar lights you'll likely end up with a very high percentage of shots that are badly underexposed. Without anti-flicker, you can use a slower shutter speed (1/120 in US, 1/100 or slower elsewhere) to try to counteract it. The slower the shutter speed, the better. Another solution is to use flash, but it needs to be rather strong to act as the dominant or primary light source. Flash also limits the shutter speed you can use, but when it's the primary light source it can act like a fast shutter... most flash have a duration equiv. to approx. 1/720, at a minimum (standard studio strobes fire more slowly... but there are specialized strobes that fire much faster, too).

Shooting sports action without flash and where faster shutter speeds are usually wanted, under fluorescent, sodium vapor and some other similar types of lighting, without anti-flicker I saw 1/4 to 1/3 of shots ruined by severe underexposure and another 1/4 to 1/3 that weren't great but were recoverable with some careful post processing. I made a point of shooting RAW images, in order to have as much adjustability as possible in post-processing. Of course, the down side to this is that every image has to be post-processed!

Anti-flicker, if your camera has it, detects the cycle of the lighting and times the shutter release to coincide with peak output. Using anti-flicker in some of the same venues where I had a lot of exposure problems before, I now see almost no images being lost to underexposure and the vast majority are well exposed. It works quite well! Every once in a while I notice a slight lag in shutter release and might have an occasional shot ruined when my timing is thrown off.... But it usually works in a small fraction of a second and for the large part I don't notice anti-flicker working at all.

When I was an AV producer working for a yearbook company, I was often sent to schools to photograph a range of, well, everything, for their prima donna yearbook advisors. Candids, classroom activities, sports, etc. — I got it all. I knew how, because I grew up doing it in high school in the 1970s.

Later, in the mid-2000s, I was training school photographers. I went to a lot of trouble to write a manual on it, including spending several days at my kids' elementary school taking pictures for their memory book, which my wife was editing. So here's my formula, used a decade ago but still relevant:

Fluorescent lighting in schools is USUALLY from ubiquitous 2'x4' ceiling 'troffers'. If you're lucky, they all contain the same brand and type of fluorescent tubes... usually Cool White (4100K to 4200K). Those are actually heavy on the green part of the spectrum. If you're REALLY lucky, they use Daylight tubes (5000K). They're easy to work with. But whatever you encounter, you're going to average them together with a gray card and custom white balance.

To get the exposure and color balance right, I would carry a Delta-1 gray card and do a Custom White Balance on my Canon. (It's called a manual or preset white balance on some other brands.) Your camera manual will tell you how to do that. The procedure differs from brand to brand.

I first put the camera into 100% manual exposure mode. That means NO auto ISO, and manual aperture and shutter settings. With a 28-75mm f/2.8 zoom, I'd set my shutter speed to 1/60 at a minimum, and to avoid fluorescent light flicker, 1/125 at a maximum. (I know how to hold a camera very still, and use a monopod when I can.) I used ISO 400-800, because any higher on that old 20D or even the 50D I used would be too noisy. I used f/2.8 to f/4, because the lighting in schools is remarkably similar from room to room. I used NO flash.

Next, I would set the meter to center-weighted mode and meter a gray card in the light falling on my typical subject. Then I would adjust the aperture for the correct exposure readout (+/-0).

Finally, I would do a custom white balance, using Canon's two-step procedure for that. I would use that combination of manual settings to photograph everything I needed to in that same light. I might chimp a bit (review images on the back of the camera) and adjust slightly if part of the room were darker or lighter, but that would usually not be necessary. I worked in JPEG mode. And I did little, usually no, post-processing.

Now for the secrets to photographing dark people and objects. You can photograph anything or anyone black or dark toned, but to get a detailed image, you must make use of "specular highlights" — reflections of your light sources. Drum this principle into your head:

The size of the light source, relative to the size of the subject, determines the size of the specular highlight, the size of the diffuse highlight, and the shadow edge "acuteness" of the image.

The larger your light source (think: completely overcast sky, or 7-foot umbrella), the softer the image, and the more light wraps around the subject and creates specular highlights. On an overcast day, the specular highlight and the diffuse highlight will have about the same value. On a bright, sunny day, there will be harsh shadows, small specular highlights, somewhat larger diffuse highlights, sharp demarcation between highlights and shadows, and the shadows will be around two f/stops darker than the highlights.

In very specular lighting, such as direct flash from an on-camera strobe, African Americans tend to have a "soot and shiny chalk" look that they hate. In diffuse lighting — soft light that wraps all around them — they have a nice, soft, rounded tone. Classroom, lunchroom, library, and general office lighting in schools is nice and soft, and just bright enough to use with good results.

Back to the cafeteria:

If the lighting is reasonably soft and uniform, as I think it will be, you should have a light that is flattering to African Americans. The trick is to nail down that exposure and white balance. DO NOT use auto white balance or you will see lots of variations in color in the same room, as it reads brightly colored objects or clothing and tries to make them gray...

Here are some examples from the lunchroom and classrooms in that school. View in Download mode to see them properly. Yes, the background on the kid in red sweater eating dessert first is photoshopped in by my wife for the book she was building. There was a distracting kid behind him.