More MMA from SLC

[zerodog]

First real test of the D3s. I would say it passed. I knew when I touched this camera I had to have it. Weird light, white fence, smoke machine haze, bring it on! What do you guys think?

1.


2.


3.

[DGK*CRONE]

These are great. If I remember correctly... last time you posted, you said you struggled with the low light but it looks like you got past that.

The first shot is my favorite of these. Good timing on all fo them. Great job.

[zerodog]

Thanks man!

[Harold Davis]

i thought i commented on these yesterday. awesome set!! i really like 1 and 2. they have a greater level of intensity than 3, but the expression in 3 is sweet too!!!

[Pete7D]

Did a flash was used on these?

thanks

[zerodog]

No flash in mma. That is a no no.
ISO 8000 1/1600 f3.2 on all of these.

Thanks for lookin guys!

[dmourati]

That first shot made me gasp. Nice work. Shooting through the first fence?

[zerodog]

Yep at this event I was shooting though the fence. It was white, which made it extra sucky. That is where the funky halos come from.

[Photo-John]

Yeah, the D3S is a wonderful, wonderful camera. I just had to return the loaner I had to Nikon - that was a sad day

I agree the first photo in this set is pretty excellent. You can't beat dripping blood to get a message across

[DGK*CRONE]

Yep at this event I was shooting though the fence. It was white, which made it extra sucky. That is where the funky halos come from.

I assumed that is what that was but I didn't think it was because of the color of the fence. Does that not happen as much when the fence is black?

[zerodog]

Not as bad with black. The white was weird.

[jacobovs]

congrats on featured pic. The shot is AWSOME!

[zerodog]

congrats on featured pic. The shot is AWSOME!

Thanks man!
And thanks guys for the featured photo!

[Photo-John]

You can't argue with dripping blood

smartwombat is the guy to thank. He's the one who picks the weekly Featured Photo for the sports forum.

[groovehouse]

Nice work. I'd love to know who won the fight in that last image. If you're coming into the octagon with pink hair, you better bring the pain too.

What about post-processing? Was there some noise reduction done? Some of the images look a little soft around the arms, body and heads.

I'd love to shoot some MMA but am a bit put off by flying blood. Alternately, I'd love to try to shoot some boxing.

[zerodog]

That was the beginning of the end for pink hair dude. That fight lasted a total of 45 seconds. He tapped about 5 seconds after that picture. The skinny kid is the ****. He is moving up to the big time now. His last fight I photographed went about the same way. I heard his last 5 fights totaled 5 minutes between them all. He is very, very fast.

The softness is the white cage/ fence. It is one of the many challenges with shooting MMA. Some of it is smoke machine haze.

The PP on these is this. A tiny bit of NR, sharpen to taste, crank the black point till I get a fair amount of clipping in the backgrounds, contrast, fill light, and clarity as needed. I try to keep it simple so I can just paste all of my settings across all of the images in a set. Some need some more work beyond that but usually not much.

For the most part these were totally usable straight out of the camera. I shoot JPEG for action events because the camera does a lot of the heavy lifting with processing then. The Active D on the Nikons is incredible. In general it takes a lot of work to match it in PP with RAW files. So when you are dealing with 3000 images, it can be a time suck. JPEG is smaller and smarter.