Photography Challenge - Shooting Boxing Match

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 1/400^th.  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.

Topaz Denoise

Nikon D300S to D600 Transition Comparisons

     So, I’ve been casually using my Nikon D600 a bit lately and have been getting more familiar with it.  I come from a D300S, which I had for maybe 6 years prior to getting the D600.  So now I know enough to do a comparison between the two.  The pros, cons, and some things that jut need adjusting when switching between the two cameras.  I might say, that I never fully used the D300S.  I use a lot of the basic stuff, but not so much the plethora of adjustment in the camera.  In any case, here goes..

Quick comparison of switching to a Nikon D600 from a Nikon D300S:

Pros

- I’ll start with the obvious: better low light performance, and depth of field control on the FX sensor

- Connector doors on the left side are much improved on the D600.  Instead of the one piece rubber door, that is consistently a pint to seal, the D600 has three separate doors with proper hinges.  Yay.

- The D600 has Scene modes, like a point and shoot.  At first I thought it was pretty cheesy and almost offensive to have these on a close to $2000 camera body, but some of the odd ones may come in handy instead of having to fiddle with 5 or more adjustments.

- Custom Menu – the D600 has a menu at the bottom that you can select the popular menu selections you frequently use out of any of the categories to have them all in one menu for quick access.  Yay again.  No longer are the days where I have to scroll though pages of menu items I never or rarely ever use, just to get to the white balance or ISO auto adjustment menus.

- The body is actually lighter for the D600 than D300S.  Although that is offset by the heavier lenses you have to use for full frame sensors.

- The D600 has a better battery latch mechanism than the D600.  It is purpose built with a latch for the battery and a spring to eject the battery, with the door providing only the function of covering the battery..  The D300S has a lower cost design that the door itself is the latch holding in the battery, and the springs are the actual battery contacts.

- Most functions to control the ISO, focus, exposure, white balance, and even size/type of files can be accessed through the rear buttons, holding them and rotating the selectors instead of having to go into the camera menus in the D300S.  That’s awesome.

Cons

- Battery life when left on:  for some reason, the battery seems to drain fast on the D600 when I inadvertently leave the camera on while uploading photos to my computer or whatever.  My D300 seemed to last much longer when this happens.  Leave the D600 on overnight and the battery is dead.  The D300 would only drain a small amount.

- Having to switch battery formats is a bit of a negative, since I had extra batteries for my D300S I could have used.  Although the reason for the format change was to lessen the potential to short the contacts out.  And the new ones have more capacity, so that is a positive to offset the negative.

- I use a Nikon AH-4 handstrap with my camera.  On my D300S, it didn’t interfere with the battery door and battery removal.  On the D600 it does, and I have to rotate the bottom plate out of the way (thankfully don’t have to remove it) to remove the battery.

- The D600 only allows up to a three bracket exposure set for some reason.  Despite the higher inherent dynamic range on the D600, I would much prefer the options on the D300S with up to 9, I don’t know why it can’t have more, it’s only a software change.  On the good side, you can choose a spread up to 2ev on the D600.  The D300S was only 1ev max.

- The controls for light metering pattern, and autofocus have been changed significantly.  I think I prefer the D300S style better, with the hard switches for both, the focus at the top of the back panel and the light metering on the bottom.  Instead, now you have to hold a button down and use the selector wheels to change things.  It’s just not as quick.

- The soft flash button.  The flash doesn’t automatically pop up when the button is pressed for the flash as the D300S had.  On the D600, the flack will pop up when you press the shutter.

- Focus range of field – the D300S has more autofocus points and when choosing a single point focus, has a greater range in the visible field, if I want to focus on something that is near the edge of the field of view.

Other Things

- The zoom in and zoom out buttons for viewing photos are reversed on the D600.  Instead of zooming out, I keep hitting the erase photo lock button instead.

- Bracketing on D300S I needed to trigger each shot by itself.  D600 it does the bracketing sequence automatically, which is probably a good thing, since the photos are in close succession.

- The size/weight of the battery charger.  Seriously, this MH-25 beast of a charger is unnecessarily huge and a terrible design..  I spend a good deal of time lugging around gear to take landscape photography.  A small, lightweight charger would have been more appropriate and useful.  Why design such a large charger for no reason except to impress??









Please excuse the photos, I was feeling lazy/drunk today to produce some decent comparison photos :-)

Filtering out the BS

     Traditional photographers think they need to outfit their lenses with UV filters.  Do yourself a favor and skip that.  It just ends up costing you some money and it also makes for worse photos.  In the ancient times, some film had strange effects due to the photoreactive chemicals reacting with the UV light, and hence the UV filter.  Digital camera sensors all have been developed so the sensor is not affected by UV.  All the filter does, is create more lens flare and I also found that it traps moisture more.  There are rare occasions that if you are in a hostile environment, you know.. photographing a volcano, dirt bike race, or in the mist of a waterfall, then it might be beneficial to protect the lens, but for practically all other situations it is not needed despite many people still thinking they need to buy these things and put them on all of their lenses.  Standard Nikon lens coatings are actually very robust.  I sometimes have no choice but to wipe my lens with whatever shirt I am using.  Shocking, yes I know.  Some photographers treat their cameras like their first born and baby them, but to me they are simply tools, and sometimes I have only what I have with me.  Even with this, my old 18-200 lens that has joined me on many adventures has no visible scratches on the outer lens.

     One of the more useful filters I like to use is a circular polarizer.  It makes for better photos especially outdoors by increasing the contrast, increases the color saturation, and reduces or eliminates glare from reflections on water glass, wet leaves, etc., provided you can afford the lower light that it lets through to the sensor.There’s many, many brands of these circular polarizers you can buy cheap starting in the low 20s.  The problem with a low cost one is, while they will be a polarizing lens, they are also likely to cause negative effects too, so what’s the point?  Circular polarizers are difficult to manufacture to get the desired qualities.   And a good one will also have antireflective coatings on them.  Without them, there will be more ghosting and lens flare induced by the filter itself.  Finally, for an outdoor photographer, you are going to get dirt and dust on the lens, so the final coating needs to be scratch resistant.  

     Sorting through many pages of internet wisdom regarding circular polarizer filters leads me to find that the Marumi Super DHG Circular polarizer filter is, if not the best, one of the best circular polarizing filters you can get, so I got one.   The DHG in the name refers to the antireflective coating.  The super refers to the outer coating that is supposed to be very hard, scratch resistant and also has very low surface tension, so it rejects water and oil, beading up on it instead of smearing all over.  Sounds just what I need.  It’s not very cheap, the lowest cost I found was around $100 from my friend eBay… likely much more at your neighborhood store, if you can even find it, but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run for the better quality photos it will be helping with.

Full Frame Time - Nikon D600 vs. Canon 6D Considerations

     I bought the bullet and got a Full frame, FX sensor Nikon D600.  I am always looking for better low light performance and dynamic range and this will up the performance over my current D300s.  Less blow outs and dark spots in landscape/outdoor shots, which I primarily use mine for.  I was waiting for the D600 body to get down to $1600 or so, but I saw a sale at BJ photo (NOT a porn site :) in Waterloo for $1800 that also included a full version of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements as well.  Not a bad deal.  Seems I can still get around $900 for my D300s…  either that, or I can buy a couple lenses and become a wedding photographer.  Or not.

My other concern with this is it’s a 24.9 megapixel camera.  The raw sizes are going to be quite huge and I wonder how processing will be with my 5+ year old computer.

     After my 18-200 lens for my D300S died a couple months ago, I was wondering what I wanted to d, since I was without a lens as that was my only one.  I wanted to upgrade a full frame camera, but the lenses for FX sensors are not only more expensive, they are heavier as well, which is a concern when backpacking.  I decided that was acceptable as a tradeoff, but the question was also what brand.  I am certainly not a Nikon fan by any means, although I am familiar with them.  Canon is not so much better either from what I read online, they are both dicks about warranty, and picking and choosing what they feel like repairing, and squeezing out the little repair guy by not selling parts to anyone, which I detest, but there’s not much choice, similar to the mobile carrier situation in Canada – they are all in collusion and all are evil, out to screw their own consumers. 

     That aside, I was considering Canon as well.  Might as well, not like I was tied to any lenses and I heard some good things about their products.  So, it was the Canon 5D Mark III or the Nikon D600.  Glancing at the stats on paper, the 6D has some extra bells and whistles such as WiFi and GPS, which I don’t care much about.  I have no problem plugging in a USB cable, and for the GPS, I do geotag shots quite a bit, but I prefer to carry my handheld GPS instead of keeping the camera GPS on between shots and sucking the battery.  So neither of those are draws for me.  There are some differences, the Nikon has higher resolution, more autofocus points, shot speed and a 100% viewfinder advantages.  One other large difference for me is the Nikon as a built in flash, whereas the Canon requires an external flash.  The 6D has battery life, maybe some better low light capabilities (based on lower resolution/less noise at higher ISO), and possibly better white balance correlation.  The low light performance is a difficult question.  

     Low light performance can be two different things and is a complicated issue.  Either high dynamic range (pulling details from shadows), or just plain old high ISO performance..  less noise at high ISO, faster shutter speeds allowable when there is not much available light.  The Nikon is certinly better in the huigh dynamic range, whereas the Canon _may_ be better in the high ISO, which many people seem to say.  DxOmark does scientific sensor tests, labeling the D600 as the best, but that's just the sensor itself.  After that there's processing, if you save your photos as JPG and not RAW format.  There's also the low light autofocus performance to consider.  The consensus is that at east in JPG mode the Canon is better, and it may be a bit better in the low light autofocus department as well.  If that's not complicated enough, there's the difference in megapixels, since downsampled photos always are sharper and have less noise.  It's the photoreceptor  per pixel ratio. So - it is a difficult topic, although the general consenus is the Canon is better at low light high ISO performance.  In the end both are capable cameras. 

     But one thing tipped it over for me to decide on Nikon in my mind, which people don’t tend to talk about in reviews I’ve read, is the types of lenses available.  After using the all purpose ultrazoom 18-200 lens quite a bit on the D300S, I am a fan of it.  When traveling or backpacking, I am only taking one lens with me.  End of story.  I am not taking a while bag of different lenses.  Some people hate these all in one lenses because, I admit they do have some tradeoffs in distortion and the like, but it suits my needs well for situations where I want a wide lens and when I need to zoom in on wildlife or some details far away.  The equivalent lens in FX is the 28-300mmNikon lens.  Canon doesn’t have a lens like that.  Well, actually they do have a 20-300 lens but it is ultra expensive and much heavier than the Nikon version, and performance isn’t all that great.  Sure, I will get some prime lenses, some low f stop lenses for certain occasions when i have the luxury of carrying around a bag of lenses with me, but like I said, I do like the all in one lens for traveling, and canon just doesn’t have a lens that is in this category, so the Nikon it is.