Humbled I am, all I know about boxing is what I've seen posted here. These are from a small gym in a Tacoma Boys and Girls club (which has 4 Olympic golds in its history, Leo Randolph -'76 Montreal, in attendance and doing some match introductions ), these are prelims for a Golden Gloves larger event the next day. I choose the neutral corner on left in this image for my position.
1. http://elfelm.zenfolio.com/img/v1/p917441499-3.jpg
I had assumed I would be standing ringside, I didn't realize a ring had this extra 2 foot knee high extension to it, so found myself in the most uncomfortable contortioned twisting half seated position to get close enough to shoot between the ropes.
D300, iso 4000, 1/250 @ 2.8. Mostly using a Tamron 28-105. I did grab a few using 50mm which gave me slightly lower iso but found it too tight - they seemed to come towards my position all the time.
My post production: raw - lightroom for overall wb and often "fill adj" to open the shadows, I export full size files and then ran through a noise-ninja plus a 20-60 USM batch and convert to srgb for web. The zen-folio produces the various smaller files here - but they are very close to orig for c & c.
One major technique question: I tried constantly changing my focus point to the boxer facing me, which really slowed me down and killed my keeper ratio as they were never content to just stand in one place... how do you handle that?
#8 is probably the best one of the set, only because the WB isn't jacked up with that one.
Seriously, most of these are really soft. Probably a combination of motion blur and heavy crops? The action is okay in a few (4, 7, 10), but the other issues with the images (WB, softness) are hurting the overall quality.
No offense to the OP, but that image #8 is why I'm usually leary of seeing B/W images posted without knowing what kind of quality the person posting consistently produces (i.e., the B/W might be hiding color issues!)
The post processing: #1 is a funky HDR from a photomerge (3 frames 1 stop apart each side then merged); the rest have some vibrancy added- raws are very flat, then noise ninja and the high threshold low amount unsharp mask mainly adds contrast which I think is what bothers you. The cycling lights throw colors off, I am shooting with a zoom and light sources are low and in frame but I am still fairly happy with where the skin tones are, I don't expect much more at iso 4000. Here is #5 full frame with no post P for comparison. I am looking for help on improving the shooting technique, focus point moving methods. Thanks for helping! Dan http://www.elfelm.net/fm/100205_golden-gloves-prelims-tacoma_122.jpg http://elfelm.zenfolio.com/img/v3/p646747078.jpg
