Kakuto and Karate Tournament

Been shooting some (practice) matches in my (boxing/grappling) gym and I get call from my instructor to show up for a Karate tourney held by a friend of his. Shot some of these and they came out O.K. in my book for my first outing. Lighting was really decent in this place. Bright day and tons of fluorescent lighting.

I brought XTi the nifty with me this time, compared to just using the 17-55, and it turned up some nicer photos. Although the problem with the nifty, which I later found out, has some focusing issues with all the fast movement. I plan on moving up to a Sigma 30/1.4 (per recommendation of SnapLocally, THANKS!!!) as soon as I get some, more, funds for it.

Flickr
(I had to put these on really $hitty res cause I was running out of space on my FREE FLICKR accnt! I need to pay for Unlimited!:p)

This guy was out .25 seconds later

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Kind of odd. The pics are good enough. Why is there such a belt difference between competitors though. I have seen many martial arts competitions but never where there is such a drastic difference in belts.

I don't know why there was such a difference in belts. I asked about it and I was told that it was normal for that to occur.

It was hard trying to frame and compose em with them moving so much. Is it normal for cropping to occur in PP for shots like these?

Where was your ISO set at? The Noise is really high, does not appear dark in there, and your shutter speed looks a tad slow (fighters are not frozen).

Mgw189 wrote in post #10814692
Kind of odd. The pics are good enough. Why is there such a belt difference between competitors though. I have seen many martial arts competitions but never where there is such a drastic difference in belts.

I was thinking the same thing...talk about being tossed into the deep end...yikes

800 ISO on the XTi with the 50/1.8
1600 ISO with the 17-55/2.8

the other perk to this day too was the guy running the tournament didn't have anyone else doing any sort of photography. I wasn't paid, and thankfully I wasn't, but the guy was super stoked on the shots I did share with him. He knew well before hand that they would be very amateurish

What am I looking to do better next time?