Strange problem with D300: Fluorescent Lighting

Sorry I have to attached the other picture seperately

One of the "fixes" in the new firmware was the auto-white balance. You don't mention if you used auto or self set.

Try one on self set wb - set for fluorescent - yellow.

Also - I'd send this on to Nikon Tech Support.

Dave

Sorry, I didn't provide all the information. The pictures above were taken in Auto WB. Also, I have shot in fluorescent WB and PRE the result were similar, the color was off in high ISO, and accurate in low ISO. I am also sending this to Nikon tech support.

This is a typical and well known problem when shooting images with the main light source being fluorescent tubes.

The "problem" with flourescent light is, it hasn't got a fixed color temperatur. Its color temperatur oscillates with the double frequency of the mains power. Therefore, even if you set your cameras WB to fluorescent light, you set it to an averaged value. Such pictures will appeanice (like your first image), when the exposure time is long enough to cover at least one full cycle of the oscillation. (Your first image was taken with 1/30 sec). Now, your second image was taken with 1/1250sec. This is only a smaller part of one cycle of the oscillation. You might be lucky to take the capture while the colortemperature was near the average value the camera uses, but you might also take the image at a time where the actual color temperature is quite different from that. This leads to an image like your second one. The last effect to be observed is an image where the color varies within the image. It depends on the X-sync speed of the camera if you can produce this effect or not. Typically cameras with X-sync speeds at 1/125 to 1/250 can produce those images with exposure times at 1/250 to 1/500.

Rainer explained it better than I would have. I had similar problems shooting in a school gymnasium - keep the shutter speed up and not some uch of a problem. But if I took a burst of shots 4 or 5, you could actually see the colour temperature changing in the pictures.

Fluorescent lights flicker at 60 cycles a second. You captured the flicker.

-- "Fluorescent lights flicker at 60 cycles a second."

John, the light emited is the product of two sine functions (voltage and current) ... both functions have a frequency of 50htz in some countries, and 60htz in the US. The product (and that the light emited) of these two functions is a function with a frequency of 100htz or 120htz (the double of the root frequency). By the way ... standard bulbs do also flicker at this frequency (but the amplitude isn't that big as it is with tubes).

But the main point is, fluorescent light varies the color temperature. The original poster has NOT captured a flicker.

120 times/sec in the US.

AC power oscillates 60 times per second, each oscillation is one cycle of a sine wave, with both a positive peak and a negative peak. So two peaks, 60 cycles/sec = 120 peaks/sec.

Thanks for the inputs