PHOTOS PLEASE

[urgrund777]

Foo, where were those shots taken?

[tnf]

Awesome tnf. That looks like a screech owl. GG spotting one -- and getting some nice shots of it.

Actually I think its a Pygmy Owl. Hard to shoot either way.

[Foo]

Foo, where were those shots taken?

First Shot - SH1 Kapiti Coast just beneath the Pikakariki Hill Rd lookout, looking directly West (just out of shot to the right is Kapiti Island, and to the left the South Island sounds)
Second Shot - Dawson Falls, Mt Taranaki
Third Shot - Oakura Beach, Taranaki
Fourth Shot - SH4 looking West over Erua Forest
Fifth Shot - Papamoa beach near Tauranga, looking North

All North Island, New Zealand last year.

[Yeahso]

My friend had his third televised professional MMA fight at the weekend, and I was backstage and cageside for the event. It was fucking brilliant. Also featured the first female MMA fight in the UK. Few pics:

[tnf]

That guy looks like a fucking beast. Have you trained with him?

Also, hoping to shoot a little MMA this year myself. Any suggestions? What lenses did you shoot this event with?

[Don Carlos]

Nice

[Yeahso]

That guy looks like a fucking beast. Have you trained with him?

Also, hoping to shoot a little MMA this year myself. Any suggestions? What lenses did you shoot this event with?

I've only lifted weights with him, I don't really care for MMA training, I'm still a bodybuilder.

No suggestions, tnf, just point the camera at exciting stuff; you can't really plan shots when things move as fast as this. Consider the cage in your focusing, accept that your pictures are going to be blurred/noisy as hell, and try not to miss knockouts. I used a 24-70; I barely ever use anything else. You've got the MKIV, you should have great fun at an MMA fight. My 5D2 focuses too slow and has a crap frame rate. None of those shots are from rapid fire, I have to keep it on single shot and just pick my moments.

[Don Carlos]

I demand a blog update

[Dave]

NIce fight pics man.. Better than a lot I've seen. Most severely lack the emotion these show.

[Tormentius]

Great fight pics.

[Dave]

By the way, tnf, I just shot some basketball with the 200 1.8. The 200mm f/2 would great for basketball, but it is a little short for cross court shots. The extender would make up for that. It's also a perfect length for shooting defense from the opposite throw-in line. Some TV guy mumbled something about that being a bad place to sit, but then most TV guys I've met seem like assholes.

I'm sending the 1.8 back and getting an f/2. It didn't track very well, the buttons/switches were a little too worn and the mount as a bit loose. I couldn't see dropping that kind of cash for something Canon won't service. At least they could bring it backup to to par if they still did that.

[Hipshot]

Cross post.

[Tormentius]

[mrd]

DTES?

[Tormentius]

DTES?

Nope, Robson and Homer. I do a fair bit of shooting in the East Side too though since there are always interesting people in that area.

[tnf]

Some Bald Eagles from today. Light sucked so the images are a little flat. The 100-400L is a decent lens, but compared to the 500mm F4 IS's and the 600mm F4 IS's that everyone else shooting with me that day was using, its a POS - especially in overcast conditions.

[Don Carlos]

Love the last pic

[tnf]

Just spent the morning shooting with a 400mm F2.8 - amazing lens. The terrain I was shooting on required me to go handheld with it for much of the day - which sucked as it is 20+ pounds - but even without IS I was able to shoot with a fast enough shutter speed to keep it steady.

I would like one of these.

[tnf]

Some shots from the 400 F2.8

I hate vignetted pictures, but I vignetted some of these to see if it helped offset the overcast sky. Didn't care for the result - full res shots don't use it.

[Yeahso]

A few shots here in my blog of a riot I covered last year in London:

http://john-godwin.co.uk/blog/oh-julian/

The shots are going to be part of an exhibition next year. I had to reprocess them in high res, as the prints going up are like, 50 feet wide or something similarly massive. Saved a few low-res ones for the web, though.

[Yeahso]

Oh, the reason I haven't posted them is because I have to pay for the bandwidth on my site, and I would upload them somewhere, but Tinypic is inexplicably banned here, and imageshack is dismal for uploading multiple images.

[xer0s]

Looks like there was more photographers than there was riot folk...

[Yeahso]

Yeah, it was a bit weird. The distribution of photographers:rioters was very skewed at the front. However, that's a good thing, because the rioters made up for their low number by throwing bottles of piss and pieces of glass.

[tnf]

That chubby fellow in the first riot pic looks rather upset. I may have missed this from an earlier post, but what why were they rioting?

[Yeahso]

haha, yeah he looks like Jack Black.

They were rioting because they are anarchists that kick off at any opportunity. But the purpose of the protest itself was to highlight corporate/financial greed ahead of the G20 Summit.