I had an opportunity to do some indoor sports photography for the first time and was quite surprised when I saw the color banding that occurred on the photos using a high-speed shutter speed under fluorescent lights. After a couple of photos I quickly realized that this banding had something to do with the lighting. Its effect wasn't noticable at 1/60/sec and got more noticable as the shutter speed increased. After checking further into this issue, I learned that the color variation across the photo was caused by the varying color output of the lighting over the 60 hertz cycle.

Does anyone reading this discussion shoot indoor sports photography and how is this color variation issue handled? Is there a quick way to remove the color cast variation over a large number of photos?

I would like to hear from anyone that shoots a lot of indoor sports under this type of lighting conditions and learn their recommendations in shooting these events.

can you post an example of what you are experiencing? What camera are you shooting with?
I shoot alot of indoor basketball but I use additional lighting in the qym. I set up 2 alien bees and shoot RAW. Usually 1/200, 800ISO 5.6 with my 5D. Here is a recent shot from a tournamnet.

Thanks for your response regarding the indoor sports photos. One of the points I failed to add is that flash photography is not allowed for the gymnastic photos, therefore I could only use the ambient fluorescent lights.

I was shooting with a 5D, at ISO of 1600 with a F2.0 setting. At 1/125 sec. the color banding was not very noticable - at 1/250 and higher it was very apparent. Unfortunately, there is not much stopping action at 1/125 sec. I could only get photos at the peak of an action or movement.

Thanks

I shot some images at a couple of the University of Hawaii Women's Volleyball matches last year [some are posted in an earlier article]. Initially I forgot to change the white balance to match the arena lighting [DUH!!!] but fixed most of those in the RAW conversion. I then found some people in the stands with white shirts [I used the players uniform for one shoot] and looked for something close to neutral gray and used a curves adjustment layer to correct the ciolor...it seemed to work OK. I didn't notice a banding problem. I was somewhere around ISO 800 with the noise reduction feature turned on. I shot with a Nikon D200.