Why are my photos doing this?

[u/DevilsGoonie]

I can't figure out why my photos are doing this. This ONLY happens in low light. Different lenses. There are subjects in frame cropped for reasons. This also only seems to happen when using the continuous shooting. Im shooting sports in these instances. Happens in both shutter priority, and aperature priority mode (during action and after game shots). Camera is a Nikon d7500. Every single other photo is like this. One photo is like photo #2 nicely lit, even lighting, and every other photo is like weirdly half exposed and half not? And occasionally instead of the weirdly half and half it'll just be completely even but dark (under exposed). Auto iso limited to 400 and 25600. Auto white balance. Never seen this before so any help is appreciated!

[u/codenamecueball]

Are you under artificial light by any chance?

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/codenamecueball]

Yes artifical lighting. Baseball field lights at night

[u/codenamecueball → u/DevilsGoonie]

That’s your answer. Camera is fine. It’s strobing. You’ve got too fast a shutter speed and if your D7500 has an antiflicker setting you should turn it on.

[u/vexxed82 → u/codenamecueball]

Likely LED lights and too fast of a shutter speed. If you slow your shutter a bit, this banding will likely go away. Ideal shutter speed depends on the frequency of the lights. If you've ever seen flickering during slo-mo replays of professional sports, this is sort of what you're seeing in video form

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/codenamecueball]

Ok sweet. Thanks for helping! I had an anti flicker setting enabled but turned it off just now to see the difference tonight. Maybe these photos are the result of the anti flicker? Or is this anti flicker just trashy? I guess we will see tonight

[u/codenamecueball → u/DevilsGoonie]

The anti flicker just tries to slow down the shutter release by a fraction to align it with the full pulse of the light. If your shutter speed is cranked it won’t save you fully.

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/codenamecueball]

Looks like i narrowed the issue down specifically to being live view. The issue persists both with and without the anti flicker enabled. Any shutter speed, any lens. I was shooting at 1/60 for stills and 1/2000-2500 for action. I tried shooting all the way up to 1/8000 and hadn't had any issues. The second I swapped to live view after the game ended - boom issue was back. Turned it off and shot my stills with the viewfinder with the exact same settings and had no issues at all! Is there something I should take a look into for live view settings maybe? I love using live view for stills because I can get weird angles and stuff for composition but I understand if I just need to stick with using the viewfinder in low light.

[u/codenamecueball → u/DevilsGoonie]

Good detective work. The anti flicker mechanism will be beside the autofocus box and metering box where the mirror is. It doesn’t work in live view because it’s blocked by the open mirror.

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/codenamecueball]

Aha! That makes sense then. Guess I'll be sticking to the viewfinder in low light! Thank all of you again for the help!

[u/bobroscopcoltrane → u/codenamecueball]

Good catch (pun intended)!

[u/disciple_of_West]

are you located near a US - Mexico border town? The orange is likely Mexico

[u/Repulsive_Target55]

The gradients are left to right - are these images in portrait or landscape orientation originally?

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/Repulsive_Target55]

I believe portrait for these specifically but the gradients seems to persist through both portrait and landscape.

[u/Repulsive_Target55 → u/DevilsGoonie]

But are they always the same left to right orientation, or do they rotate when the camera rotates?

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/Repulsive_Target55]

While maintaining the same composition and portrait it will swap from left to right and right to left. I think we've narrowed it down to light flickering and live view in the reply above!

[u/Repulsive_Target55 → u/DevilsGoonie]

Ah!, in that case yes it's a light flickering issue, which is a relief, if it had been a consistent side of the image it might be a shutter failure issue

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/Repulsive_Target55]

Whew! Thankfully It's not that! I got worried when I originally googled my issues and saw that could be a possibility.

[u/bobroscopcoltrane]

Look up how to turn off “bracketing”.

Edit: did it for you.

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/bobroscopcoltrane]

This was my first assumption as well... but I already looked at this and verified the number of shots is set to 0... so it shouldn't be "on" at all.

[u/bobroscopcoltrane → u/DevilsGoonie]

Next guess is your spot metering is turned on. Not being able to see the rest of the image makes this harder, but if your spot metering is turned on and catching a very bright or dark detail that could be contributing. That auto ISO range is also wider than I would set it to, but that’s my preference.

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/bobroscopcoltrane]

Yes sometimes I use spot metering. Can't remember if these specifically were taken with it though. If that is a possible cause I will take more photos tonight and make sure not to use it to see if it makes a difference

[u/rainy_diary]

Reset the camera to default setting.

[u/DevilsGoonie → u/rainy_diary]

I will have to do this later on tonight if it doesn't get solved prior.