Technically, as I've noted already, the TV lights made things a bit easier than the amateur tournaments I've done up til now. These are often in very gloomy school sports halls with the ISO jammed against the upper reaches of even a D3. Here at Glow, with the TV lights, ISOs were a slightly more sensible 2500/3200, which is well within the capability of the D3S bodies I have now. Exposure was 1/640th at f4 on the 24-70, for just a little helpful depth of field. I also used my 70-200, but this lens, truth be told, is a little darker than the nominal f2.8, so I used f3.5 and the higher of the ISO settings.
White balance was also fairly simple, though I still tweaked the raw files for skin tone. A couple of quick snaps of my hand suggested the Tungsten preset, with a little extra warming (A2?) dialled in. This gave me reasonable Jpegs out of camera, though a fully-custom white balance is the way to go if shooting 'peg exclusively.
The AF setting was Continuous, with a point set which is off-centre, and used this way from previous experience. I'm not sure if this is the way the boxing "regulars' work, but it's what seems to do for me. What you do is keep the off-centre point over the boxer on that side, assuming they are broadly parallel to you, and let the camera do it's thing. 9 or 21 Point selection was active here. I might try the 3D option at the next amateur bout and see how that will work. But for now I stuck with what I was familiar with and knew did work OK.
I'm still not sure I rate Pro boxing very much. It's not a sport I seek out on TV, for example. The much longer bouts of the main events, 12 rounds, seemed to drag and just give shot after shot that looked, well, the same. Although I had over 2300 images by the end of the evening, I found I was shooting much more sparingly by the final headline fight. Amateur boxing, with its head-guards, short bouts and less "cuddling" between boxers (less blood, too...) seems much more interesting to me. It doesn't attract the big bucks, of course...
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| Lenny Daws, left, fights Ville Piispanen for the vacant EU Super Lightweight Championship. D3S, 24-70 at 32mm. The wider shots looked nice, with the lights putting the ring brighter than the rest of the hall. School sports hall lighting just can't do this, so I don't shoot the very wide images there. |
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| Chris Eubank Jr, right, fights Ruslans Pojonisevs. Nikon D3S, this with the 70-200 at 80mm. This lens "flares" a bit more with the high backlighting. But I rather like the look it gave the pictures (and couldn't do much about it anyway!). |
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| Chris Eubank was watching his son and DeGale fight. Celeb-spotting in the audience, for more news-style pics which might end up in the front of the paper. |
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| Remember to get the upright shots. The stills photographers were poor-relation to the TV position for the "winner" shot, but I like this and it works OK. Chris Eubank Jr gets the nod in his fight. |
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| James DeGale, right, defends his EBU Super Middleweight title against Hadillah Mohoumadi. D3S, 24-70, at 70mm. A 12 round bout. And I have a lot of images that, frankly, look much the same... |
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| More celeb-spotting: Sussex and England cricketer Monty Panesar, centre. |
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| A decent pose, though after a lengthy TV interview, of James DeGale, who won his headlining fight to retain his EBU Super Middleweight crown. |
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