EOS 5D Mark III High Speed Continuous Shooting changing lighting, please help :)

[agunjaca]

So I'm shooting football at night in Manual mode with 50mm f1.4 with Auto ISO and 1/3200 shutter. It's set to Evaluative Metering and Servo AI. I'm using Canon 5D Mark III. Auto Lighting Optimizer is off, it has AWB and Color Profile is Neutral. During the day I get perfect shots, but as soon as night lights creep in, it starts to do this. I've attached sample photos.

[wq9nsc]

Pretty much every type of field lighting changes intensity as the waveform of the AC voltage supplying it changes.  This is generally called flicker but it is more complex than just a "flickering" of the light because the color temperature also changes along with the output.  A camera anti-flicker setting will reduce but not eliminate this from happening.

You are shooting with a far higher shutter speed than needed, 1/1,000 will freeze motion for this sport allowing lower ISO and less noise and color aberration.  Shoot in RAW and if the 5D III allows setting to white priority, do that to minimize color shift.  I would also use center weighted metering.

These were shot using 1DX III bodies with 70-200 and 400 f2.8 glass at a typically illuminated high school field.  Shot in RAW using manual exposure (1/1,000 f2.8) with auto ISO, white priority applied in post.  I do NOT use anti-flicker but compensate for any lighting changes during post.  I don't want the camera adjusting timing to try to expose only on illumination peaks.

Rodger

[agunjaca]

Do you think that Auto lighting optimizer might help? So if I understood correctly, I should lower my shutter speed, but then I'm going to have to bump up my f stop and lose some of that DOF? I didn't understand the part with white priority, what setting is that?

[wq9nsc]

Auto lighting optimizer may help a little but capture your images in RAW so that you can apply all of these changes in post.
With sports, typically you would shoot wide open but most of us rarely use a lens that opens to f1.4 for sports since most work is done with medium to long telephoto lenses.  What ISO did the camera choose for the images you posted?

With a 50mm lens at typical sports working distance, even wide open (f1.4) you will have a fairly deep depth of field.  For example, if you are 10 meters from the players with that lens wide open your depth of field is over 3 meters.  At that working distance, I would be using my 70-200 f2.8 zoomed to around 145mm with the aperture at f2.8 giving a depth of field of around 750 mm.  I am not sure which 50mm lens you have but a lot of the choices have a noticeable improvement in image quality closed down a little so try the aperture setting at f1.8 with shutter speed @ 1/1000 and compare that to f1.4 to see which works better for you.  F1.8 will cause a slight increase in ISO noise but it may be offset by the improvement in optical quality, the only way to know for sure is to try it.

For sports, I use servo AF but I use either a single point or single point with four point expansion so that I control where the camera will focus.  Give it a try if you are using another focus group (like the entire array).

Auto white priority may not be an option with your camera body, it was added to most bodies around the time the 5D III was in production.  If it is available, it will be a white balance choice in your camera menu and with Canon DPP when processing RAW files from that camera.  If that isn't an option, you may want to try the click white balance selection in DPP and then use the eyedrop symbol to click on a white uniform or shoe to get you close for further fine tuning.  The color temperature change that occurs from changing sports lighting is a common issue and many fields have a mix of lighting further complicating the issue.

Moving forward, if you can get access to a 70-200 f2.8 lens it is an excellent all-around sports lens and does very well for football (and pretty much all sports).  I typically have a 70-200 f2.8 on one body and a 400 f2.8 on the other for field sports and the body with the 70-200 accounts for around 75-80 percent of the photos at a typical event.

Rodger

[ebiggs1]

I don't know why you are using manual mode. A lot of new guys seem to think they must use manual for some strange reason, perhaps a throw back thinking that the old guys all used manual. You have a fantastic camera and it is smarter than you might think You are concerned with light so that suggests Av mode if you were needing fast action control Tv might be the choice. There isn't a good reliable way to adjust quickly to rapidly changing light that most HS sports fields suffer from in M, but Av mode will do an admirable job. But your first change is to use raw never use jpg. Forget it even exists. Get DPP4 from Canon it is free to d/l. However you decide to set up your camera do all the correcting and editing in DPP4 afterwards.

Right now it sounds like and looks like you are expecting Auto ISO to correct exposure. Make sure you set a lower and upper limit to your Auto ISO, too.