I
had the opportunity to shoot a Muay Thai boxing match my friend Jon organized
last weekend. It was a great opportunity
and challenge any photographer would benefit from. It really is hard to think of more challenging
circumstances to shoot in – very low light, very fast action and no flash. The standard for boxing match is no flash as
it is likely to distract the boxers, although many audience members don’t have
the forethought or etiquette to follow this.
It was my second time photographing a boxing match and I
learned a great deal, which I can share here, hopefully for others’
enlightenment. I borrowed my friend’s D600 body and brought my own, with one
lens on each. For up close and personal
shots, I was primarily using my 50mm F/1.4 G lens, and for wide angle I had my
14-24mm F/2.8 lens. Both work
brilliantly as they can in these circumstances.
The 50mm is almost perfect focal length for most close
shots in the ring. I debated dropping 3
grand on a 24-80 f/2.8 lens but decided better of it before and didn’t miss the
zoom at all. The F/1.4 is obviously to
get as much light as possible, and even then it was still pushing it quite a
bit. I set my camera on AF-C continuous
autofocus, shutter priority, not focus priority so the camera fires regardless
of whether I had obtained autofocus or not when I pressed the shutter. I set
the AF pattern to d9, nine point focus. I also set it to shutter priority at 1/400 of
a second to have crisp enough shots for the elusive glove-in-the-face shot, and
also capped the ISO at 3200. Even at
3200 I don’t like the low light noise on my D600, and find it unbearable above
3200. But this combo worked well for all
close shots. Mind you I was ringside,
standing up beside one of the corner posts for the most part. I also set the drive to continuous high to
capture bursts of action.
The 14-24 lens produced some surprisingly great photos of
the action going on outside the ring, the judges, announcer, referee, and
crowds. I set this camera similar to the
other one, except I set shutter priority at 1/125 to get a little more light
with the F/2.8 instead of 1/400th. I set it at ISO 3200 and continuous low drive
as well.
I was lucky to not have no one behind me. I didn’t move around all that much, but it
can be easy to get in spectators views while shooting.
I captured around 1200 photos from 9 matches. Many photos were not in focus (or at least
not focusing on what I wanted it to - between the low light, the super shallow
F/1.4 aperture and the camera being set on shutter priority for the AF
mode. But I did capture some good
ones. You have to expect this, in these
conditions. The great photos are a lot
of luck… you just have to basically time
when to hit the shutter as the opponents come together and hope for the best.
With these settings, the camera stayed at ISO3200 the
majority of the time, sometimes dipping down to ISO2500. Regardless, there is a considerable amount of
noise in the photos, so I post-processed some of them in Topaz Denoise 3.0, which
does help out quite a bit in reducing noise and tried to recover some
detail. The end photos are satisfactory,
but I do wish the venue had much brighter lights to capture better photos.
