EDIT: I changed the title of this thread because I found a pun I couldn't resist.

"Tiger Balm Internation Martial Arts Tournament 2009"
http://vimeo.com/4142410

Shot on the 5D2 with Canon 24-105L IS and SIgma 50-500mm lenses. Used a monopod with the Bigma, otherwise, all handheld.
Focusing was much more difficult than I expected, with shallow DOF and the fighters in constant motion back and forth in frame. I'll just have to practice more.

Nice man! When I heard "Martial Arts Tournament" I immediately thought of a cheesy Karate tournament (a'la Karate Kid). There's some hard-core, real Jiu Jitsu and MMA in there.

PS I don't follow Football, Baseball, Basketball, or Hockey- only MMA. Been a fan since '93.

Dylan - which monopod were you using?

Have you seen the panning Manfrotto 561B? Manfrotto Monopod demo (http://vimeo.com/386172)

BTW, I didn't know you were into MMA. My brother is a pro fighter dave cochran mma - Google Search (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=dave+cochran+mma&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

Have you seen the panning Manfrotto 561B? Manfrotto Monopod demo (http://vimeo.com/386172)

Do Want!

I'm using a standard Manfrotto monopod. I'll get a 561 at some point though. Can you lock the bottom ball so that it's stiff in relation to the feet?

I used to be heavily into martial arts, but slacked off more than a few years back. Still lots of friends in the industry though, which is handy for action film stuff! Very cool that your brother is pro! From what I understand, it's a really tough industry to break up the ranks and get paid.

The 561B has a fluid cartridge at the base. It doesn't lock.

Come on down and try it out. It's great for run and gun. Especially, when you load up the camera with a monitor and a matte box. Looks slick.

Yeah, not sure if you saw my brothers record, but he's fought some of the toughest guys out there. Including Clay Guida Mixed Martial Arts Record and Stats - Top Gun MMA (http://www.topgunmma.com/viewFighter.php?fighterid=5544). His last fight was on MTV when he fought Kit Cope - $15k for one fight! We put a DVcreators.net logo on his banner. He lost that one, but it was still cool.

I'll be going to the Pan-American Games at Cal State Domiguez Hills this weekend and will, hopefully, be shooting some footage of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championship with my 5D mk II and/or my Canon XH-A1. Should have a few clips available over the following week. :-)

I went to the Pan American BJJ Games on Sunday and shot this video of Romulo Barral (http://www.vimeo.com/3916751) fighting his first opponent of the competition. It wasn't a real exciting match, pretty one-sided, and I was feeling pretty sick the entire day, so didn't get to stay till the end. As usual, the Vimeo encoding makes the video stutter a bit. It's smooth as silk in HD!

The footage was shot on the 5D mk II, Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS, and I used a tripod as a monopod as I was sitting in the stands and didn't have room to spread the tripod legs! Edited in Premier Pro CS3 using NeoScene and output via Adobe Media Encoder.

Julian