A spot of boxing - 12th Feb 09

[Diego Garcia]

Boxing with the 5D2 then.

Simply a delight. I will get that straight out there as perhaps people were expecting me to harp on about how good the D3 was. Well, yes, it was but I found the continual mode slow on Nikon cameras when shooting boxing and testament to that was the sheer speed at which the mark 2 and the 50mm L lens twitched when in servo mode. Naturally I could only work at three frames per second and I kinda know boxing so I still caught some decent stuff. Best of all I put the 17-40 on and went wide for some new slants and dynamic shots of local stuff. Really liking what I got and very, very pleased with the ISO performance of the camera. All of tonight's work was processed in DPP and then cropped in CS4. White balance issues reared up, again due to the MHz of lighting and camera speed, so I applied white points to the nearest thing in the shot, or the brightest point. All images shot at 6400 ISO which is nice. And, if a 5d2 can do this, despite the internet crawling with issues and threads about poor AF, then what will the Mark 4 be capable of. These are the best boxing shots I have nailed since I had Mark 2 cameras.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

 

[GooGaBu]

Been a while coming these boxing shots.. I remember you talking about it when you got the 5d mk2..
It really does give good results on ISO 6400, no noise detectable on these shots (and if the full size shots anything like this.. )

You know I like the action shots, and for me number 8 really is a super shot, it has the boxers in a nice pose and you've got the ref also nicely to the shot. It has everything a good boxing shot needs.. I also like number 9 - but something about it bugs me :shrug: Don't get me wrong, very nice capture and sharp as well. Maybe it is because it's amongst the B&W shots? Maybe because I would either like to see more of the boxers - or have it cropped tighter..

Good to hear that others also are not enjoying the WB at boxing arenas..

From the 'still' shots, 4 and 5 are the ones I would go for.

How much do you crop these shots? Just out of curiosity really.

And thanks for posting some boxing shots, I got a boxing event tomorrow evening. This gave me few ideas to go for the 'non action' images a little more - just to see if I could capture something similar to what you've gotten here.

 

[paulc]

these are brilliant, 4,7,8 and nine are my faves..just marvelous.

 

[Paul Tomlinson]

I like the black & white shots best nice set of shots, i am looking at doing something like this but using the 35mm film camera with 3200 pushed to 6400 but i need to sort out where the next boxing match is taking place. Good set of shot though mate.

 

[Kryptix]

I really like no. 5 dude!

 

[Albi]

No.9 for me. Right on the button.

 

[tigerimages]

There seem as though there was a decent crowd there for that, so do you ever think you're getting in the way when you shoot events like these?

 

[Diego Garcia]

There seem as though there was a decent crowd there for that, so do you ever think you're getting in the way when you shoot events like these?

No, just use the corners and be respectful.