Why is this happening?

[Karinia]

Hello,

I was shooting a wedding and then my camera started to do this black line through my photos. Its random, shows up both mostly horizontal, but have seen a few vertical ones. Sometimes it will happen and sometimes it will be fine. Anyone seen this before? I cannot figure it out for the life of me. Do you think there is something wrong with my shutter?

My camera hardly has as much use on it. I use my camera around once a year. I am severly upset.

I have a Canon 6D. I also was using 3 different lenses. 

[Ray-uk]

The anti-flicker mode does not function in video it is just for still photography, even so it only works for flicker from mains supplied lighting at twice the mains frequency at 100 and 120Hz. Dimmed LED lighting can be flashing at a much higher frequency. There has been a mention that the banding in your video is moving in the frame but if you watch carefully you can see this is not , it actually remains in the same position relative to the frame it is the picture content that is moving.

[Karinia]

Actually it is moving. When I wasnt moving the camera it was still moving. I can tell you that for sure because I stared at my screen for a good 3 minutes with another photographer trying to figure out if my camera broke lol.

Canon does agree it was the lighting. Apparently this venue are using certain lightbulbs that other venues I was in werent using. They say to shoot at 1/60 a second to prevent that, but sucks when your at a wedding with moving subjects.... I am sure a better flash might be able to help me with that. Time to upgrade I guess.

[TCampbell]

1/60th isn't a problem with moving subjects.  The flash will 'freeze' the subject (it's more about the flash than the shutter).

When I'm shooting indoors at a venue, I might be using an exposure setting like...

Av mode with ISO 800, f/4, 1/60th and the flash enabled.  I set the Flash Sync Speed in Av Mode settting to the 1/60-1/200 sec selection.  In your camera it might be 1/60-1/160 sec.  (It's always 1/60 to whatever the max flash sync speed is).  Anyway that setting forces the camera to use a shutter speed in that range.  This gaurantees it wont use anything too slow.  

The reason I use this is because when shooting indoors the slower shutter speed allows the camera to collect more ambient light from the rest of the room.  Meanwhile the flash's very fast firing speed will burst for the tiniest fraction of a sec (the flash might be lit for around 1/1000th sec or so).  The flash will act like a shutter in that it will freeze the action, but the camera can continue to collect background ambient light and you end up with a very nicely balanaced shot (from a lighting perspective).

Otherwise you get the problem of a bright foreground subject and a very dark background (light fall-off based on the inverse-square law of physics).

[Karinia]

Yeah thats what I meant when I said upgrading my equipment. I need a better flash haha. (Though a 5D as a main body and my 6D as a secondary body wouldn't be so bad either lol. Especially if the 5D has the anti-flicker technology)

Anyone have any recommendations? I was looking at the Canon Speedlite 580EX II. I read some reviews and hear that the new 600 verison has slown down on the recharging rate and the 580 was actually better. My biggest problem with my flash right now is the recharging rate. Then sometimes it will be charged, it will still misfire and go off after the camera takes the picture. There is definitely syncing and communication issues going on with it.

[TCampbell]

For a wedding you need the CP-E4N battery pack.  It holds 8 batteries and plugs in to a port on the side of the 600EX II flash.

It massively increases the recycle speed because now the flash's internal capacitor is being recharged by 8 batteries instead of 4.  You can put the flash in a mode where it uses the 4 internal batteries plus the 8 external batteries combined to have 12 batteries recharging the flash... OR you can put it in a mode where the 4 internal batteries operating the electronics only but do not charge the capacitor and only the external pack of 8 charge the capacitor (which is the mode I tend to use).

I run the flash with Panasonic "Eneloop" batteries.  Canon advsies against using rechargable batteries that use "lithium" technology (because they get very hot when they're drained quickly... so if you're shooting rapidly the heat can actually become a problem).  But Eneloops are based on Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) and don't have that problem. 

Single-use alkaline batteries have a voltage drop as they are being drained... so the less power they have, the longer they take to recycle the flash.  The Eneloops maintian a constant voltage ... up the point when you completely drain them and then they die.  This means they tend to give you fast recycle times continuously up until they run out of power.

The other reason I like Eneloops is that they are "low self-dischrage" batteries.  Normal rechargeables lose power just sitting around on the shelf.  A fully charged battery could loose 10% of it's charged capacity just sitting around for 24 hours after being charged.  In a few weeks of sitting on a shelf (a month tops!) it's as if you never charged it.  All batteries have a self-dischrage problem.  The Eneloops are "low" self-dischrage... meaning the self-discharge takes a long time before it's a problem.  Panasonic claims that a fully charged Eneloop battery will still have 70% of it's charged capacity in it even after 5 years of sitting in storage.  

To me, that means I don't need to worry about whether my batteries are charged and ready to go.  I charge them when I finish using them and don't worry about whether they've sat around for a week or two (or a month) before I need them again.  They'd have had almost no drain in that amount of time.

[Karinia]

Thanks a ton and for all the useful infomation!!

[RobertTheFat]

---

@TCampbell wrote:

For a wedding you need the CP-E4N battery pack.  It holds 8 batteries and plugs in to a port on the side of the 600EX II flash.

It massively increases the recycle speed because now the flash's internal capacitor is being recharged by 8 batteries instead of 4.  You can put the flash in a mode where it uses the 4 internal batteries plus the 8 external batteries combined to have 12 batteries recharging the flash... OR you can put it in a mode where the 4 internal batteries operating the electronics only but do not charge the capacitor and only the external pack of 8 charge the capacitor (which is the mode I tend to use).

I run the flash with Panasonic "Eneloop" batteries.  Canon advsies against using rechargable batteries that use "lithium" technology (because they get very hot when they're drained quickly... so if you're shooting rapidly the heat can actually become a problem).  But Eneloops are based on Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) and don't have that problem. 

Single-use alkaline batteries have a voltage drop as they are being drained... so the less power they have, the longer they take to recycle the flash.  The Eneloops maintian a constant voltage ... up the point when you completely drain them and then they die.  This means they tend to give you fast recycle times continuously up until they run out of power.

The other reason I like Eneloops is that they are "low self-dischrage" batteries.  Normal rechargeables lose power just sitting around on the shelf.  A fully charged battery could loose 10% of it's charged capacity just sitting around for 24 hours after being charged.  In a few weeks of sitting on a shelf (a month tops!) it's as if you never charged it.  All batteries have a self-dischrage problem.  The Eneloops are "low" self-dischrage... meaning the self-discharge takes a long time before it's a problem.  Panasonic claims that a fully charged Eneloop battery will still have 70% of it's charged capacity in it even after 5 years of sitting in storage.  

To me, that means I don't need to worry about whether my batteries are charged and ready to go.  I charge them when I finish using them and don't worry about whether they've sat around for a week or two (or a month) before I need them again.  They'd have had almost no drain in that amount of time.

---

Tim is right about Eneloop batteries. I use Eneloop Pros wherever AA or AAA batteries are needed, even in my LED flashlights. But there are far better alternatives to the CP-E4N. I bought a 3rd-party ("Bolt", I believe) lithium battery pack from B&H. It's quicker and easier to charge than NiMH AA batteries, and it handles two cameras at once - a necessity for event photography, IMO. One very annoying problem with the CP-E4N, unless they've changed it recently, is that the plastic tabs that hold the batteries in place break off very easily, no matter how careful you are.

[isidroco]

Line is ALWAYS horizontal, looks like vertical but that's because you're holding the camera SIDEWAYS.

It's very likely a flash obstruction, either with some hoods, or even with your hand holding the lens, or as mentioned before, flash wasn't totally up. Some lenses if they are big, may obstruct flash too specially at close range.

Test is simple, try to reproduce issue without the flash, if you can't, then that's it.

AC flickering usually doesn's look that way.

[Karinia]

I get that. I noticed that all my pictures that had a vertical line where vertical pictures as well after I posted this. You honestly didn't need to cap those, just saying.

It was the lights within the venue. Its a lot more complicated then me having my hand over my lens, thanks. There was no flash obstruction. Please read the rest of the thread.

[isidroco]

Can't be the lights of the venue, because it wouldn't have rotated the dark line when you rotated the camera, it's a flash obstruction issue (or maybe mirror didn't rise fully within the camera obstructing some of the light). Sorry for the caps, didn't mean to be rude.