Loading Up
Lotsa Sweat
Closing In
David Telesco
Getting Hammered
Much Too Fast
Comin' Atcha
Nasty Uppercut
Then I checked with Alvin Lee, who's the keeper of the D1 at SI, and
he said it was available for the weekend. So I took both cameras to the
fight, but I used mostly the digital when pushing the film past 1600 still
wouldn't allow for a 1/125 second exposure. It didn't help that my 70mm
- 300mm zoom is an F4. But the digital did a very nice job of allowing
the ASA to be pushed up to 3200 without creating too much grain. Below
are some highlights.
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Loading Up |
Lotsa Sweat |
Closing In |
David Telesco |
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Getting Hammered |
Much Too Fast |
Comin' Atcha |
Nasty Uppercut |
The position I was in when taking these pictures was less than ideal: second row press table next to the ring. That's why the photographers with ringside credentials keep appearing in the photos. Overall, though, I got some decent images. This was the first professional boxing card I ever attended, and I had a good time.
Why no victory shots, you may be asking yourself. Well, the aforementioned photographers with ringside credentials lined the apron of the ring while the decision was being announced (Jones won on all the judges cards after 12 rounds). So I missed the shot. I took about 200 photos in all with the D1, and edited them between rounds (hence, no round-card girls). About 60 were worth saving when viewed on a larger screen, and these were the best of them.
The image files themselves are about 7.5 megabytes, enough to print a four or five inch photo in color. Again, the speed of the camera writing to the flash card was my biggest issue, and there were a few times when I knew I had a great shot but nothing happended when I hit the shutter. It kind of negated the advantage I had over someone who was using a strobe and had to wait three seconds for a recycle. As is the case with just about any camera at a boxing match, I had to turn off the auto-focus and go manual as there was too much (particularly ring ropes) going on for the camera to grab the fighter's faces on its own. I think, however, that the digital files are pretty forgiving with the focus. The "Comin' Atcha" photo above was not focused correctly, but some file crunching and some Photoshop work made the photo look okay.