Indoor sports with K-5, Judo

[tcom]

Yesterday was my first attempt at indoor sports with the K-5. I attended the final of the swiss championship of Judo.

I do use now my Nikon equipment for sport events, so I took the D3s with AFS 70-200/2.8 and AFS 14-24/2.8. But I wanted to give a try at the K-5 in these conditions to check the progress done with the K-5 compared to the K-7. So I took also the K-5 with DA*50-135/2.8 and the FA*85/1.4. During the day, I switched from K-5 to D3s and back several times. On the K-5, I mainly used the FA*85/1.4 to get narrower DOF compared to the D3s with 70-200/2.8.

In regards of ISO, the K-5 is really much better than the K-7. I wanted shutter times of at least 1/1000s to freeze the movements. With the DA*50-135/2.8 at reached these shutter times by setting 4000-5000 iso. So, basically, I would not have been able to take these shots with the K-7 with so low noise. With the FA*85/1.4, by setting the aperture to f/1.8 - f/2, I was able to work around 2500iso.

In regards of AF, the K-5 is also much better than the K-7. The pure AF speed with the DA*50-135/2.8 is unchanged, but there is absolutely no hunting, even in this rather poor light which makes it usable for indoor sports. The AF speed with the FA*85/1.4 is increased, and not hunting neither.

Here a few results:

1
FA*85, f/2, 1/2000s, 2500iso


2
FA*85, f/2, 1/2500s, 2500iso


3
DA*50-135, 70mm, f/3.2, 1/2500s, 4000iso


4
FA*85, f/2, 1/2500s, 2000iso


5
FA*85, f/2, 1/4000s, 2000iso


6
FA*85, f/2, 1/3200s, 2000iso


7
FA*85, f/2, 1/5000s, 2500iso


These photos and many more of the event are under http://www.flickr.com/pho...09195553/with/5235120278/

The 7 frames per second of the K-5 are welcome with this kind of photos.

I will remain with the D3s however for sports. The D3s is trimmed for sports photography and excels in this domain. Apart from a much faster AF, it writes the photos also much faster to the card. After taking a sequence of 10-15 photos (which is pretty fast at 9 frames per second), I can review the photos nearly instantly on the back screen. The K-5 however does seem, in comparison, to take ages to empty the buffer on the card. During this time, the camera reacts pretty slowly.

With the D3s, I also took the habit to review and sort the photos during the very short breaks. If the image does not please me, I delete it by pressing the delete button just twice. On the K-5, to delete a photo, one needs to press the delete button, press the arrow up to choose "Delete" and press ok.

[Ron Kruger]

Thanks Dominique. I'm already sold on the K5, but appreciate your sharing.

[tcom]

Thank you Ron.

I do have to add that it was the first time I was shooting judo, and the K-5 made it pretty easy.

[Ron Kruger]

The AF must be very accurate, because these are sharp at wide apatures. What was your keeper rate (discounting composition) compared to the D3?

[tcom]

It is really hard to say, Ron.

All in all I took around 1500 photos, D3s and K-5 together. Out of these photos, 116 made it on my flickr/pbase pages. But these figures do not tell the whole story.

I tried to delete the photos already while shooting, during the short breaks. I deleted a lot of photos this way. The criterias to delete the photos where odd composition, too similar photo, missed action, missing head, missing face, really badly framed, referee in between and wrong focus (ie. public behind, referee). The deletes because of wrong focus were surprisingly low. Sorting this way allowed to reduce the 1500 photos down to 300. Then, it was a matter of selecting the best ones to get the 116 photos on pbase/flickr.

If we do just count the wrong focus photos, I would say that for one wrong focus on the D3s, I do have around 5 wrong focus photos on the K-5.

[spyglass]

Dominique, impressive results for indoor lighting at a sporting event. I was impressed with your capture percentage. 116 keepers for 1500 shots is an amazing 7.7%  Even more impressive when you consider that you were shooting with new gear and juggling two systems.



Spyglass

[tcom]

Thank you Tim.

The first sorting from 1500 down to 300 was quite easy, removing duplicates, photos without action, uninteresting photos or badly composed. Then,  from 300 down to 116 was much tougher, trying to keep just the best ones out of the series.

Finally, this resulted in these 7.7% keepers, with pretty new gear (for both D3s and K-5), first time indoor sports and first time judo.

If I compare with my first time shooting sports, beach volleyball with the K20D, the goal was not to apply to severe sorting kriterias to have at least 50 photos left, and now with D3s and K-5 where I do have to choose among good ones to reduce it to 116... quite a change!

[Ozzi-Paul]

Great shots, the detail and focus are great & very low noise as well. Did you capture them in RAW or JPEG & has there been much in the way of PP work & noise reduction done to them.
Looking at all the great images on some of the different forums from the K-5 is getting me depressed, I would love to upgrade to one from the K20D. Maybe next year.

[tcom]

I took all photos in RAW.

PP was mostly limited to set the horizon straight (when I do concentrate on the action it happens that I forget to check the basics), reframe if needed, very small amount of exposure correction. For photos above 3200iso I did also apply some noise reduction.

[wtlwdwgn]

Good shooting Dominique. I'm also impressed with the low noise and sharp capture of the K5. It's going to be hard for the K5 to AF as quickly with only 11 points compared to the D3's 53 points.

[JIMBO]

Great to see someone who enjoy's their work as much as you do.  Thank you for sharing. JIM

[tcom]

Good shooting Dominique. I'm also impressed with the low noise and sharp capture of the K5. It's going to be hard for the K5 to AF as quickly with only 11 points compared to the D3's 53 points.

Thank you Steve.

I do just need to clarify a thing. The D3s 51pt 3D AF is a great feature. You put the active AF point on the subject you want to photograph, and then recompose or wait for the subject to take the right position, the 3D tracking follows the subject as long as it remains within the field of the 51 AF points. A great feature, but it takes some processing power and slows down the AF. Nikon does have an addendum to the user manual, a PDF document aimed at the AF settings for sports and it does NEVER mention the 3D 51pt. For these D3s photos, I did set the AF to 9pts to get the maximum speed.

[tcom]

Great to see someone who enjoy's their work as much as you do.  Thank you for sharing. JIM

Thank you Jim.

In fact, I do want to get more into sports photography and hopefully get access to sport events as photographer. But in order to achieve this, it is easier to get access or even getting asked to cover an event when you can show what you are able to. At the moment, I do try to cover as many events as I can, I take each opportunity as a chance to improve myself and also show what I am able to do.

At the moment, I do not have to live from my photographic income, this makes it easier to enjoy the work. But then I learned at this judo event that an "amateur" photographer with a D3s is not so welcome among the professional photographers which do see in me a competitor. I had the chance to compare my judo photos of the event with the photos of one of the professional photographers at the event and I can well see why he took my as a competitor.

[fevbusch]

 These are just perfection in photography. Love 'em all and hope I get that good.
   regards, Freddy    P.S.   that 85 is some lens, and obviously a good match for the K5.

[blackcloudbrew]

Freddy, I believe I speak for the group in saying I hope we all get as good as Tcom. He really shows what this gear can do and has caused me numerous rounds LBA.