MMA: Driller Promotions Presents: Chaos at Canterbury VII

On Saturday, 12-20-14, I was cage side photographing the MMA event, Driller Promotions Presents: Chaos at Canterbury VII at the new Expo Center at Canterbury Park. When I walked into the new center I liked what I saw at the start... the venue was very well lit by all the overhead lights. Then I noticed light cans on four different post around the cage. My thought was oh, no... I had a feeling when the fights started that the house lights would go down and the lights surrounding the cage would go on. If that happened I knew that the lighting wasn't going to be sufficient. There weren't enough lights surrounding the cage for even lighting. There would be bright spots and there would be dark areas... then in some cases I knew from experience in similar lighting situations one fighter would be fully lit while the other would be in the darker area. Because the cage wouldn't be lit completely there would be more shadows to deal with or another way to say it...I won't be able to use those images.

I shoot with a minimum shutter speed of 1/1000 for my combat sporting events. It looked like I would be able to shoot with an ISO of 2500 if the house lights stayed on. I would be very happy shooting at that ISO. I wouldn't know until shortly just before the first fight what I could actually shoot at when the house lights go down or off.

When the fights started I needed an ISO of 10,000 for the dark areas, but in the other areas that would blow out the skin of the fighter. Eventually, good or bad, I changed to Auto ISO with the maximum of 12,800.


MMA: Chaos at Canterbury VII

Chuck Ryan Photography

Charles W. Ryan II (Facebook)

Chuck Ryan Photography (Facebook)

CIIcanoe (Blog)

Chuck Ryan Photography (Model Mayhem)