Most of the cameras offer usable ISO up to let say 1600. As my 40D does. Sony is out of the competition and Nikon... well it's just a Nikon. Impressive how good the pictures come out on ISO 12800 on 5Dmk2.
There is grain - visible, can't miss it but overall performance is just amazing. Picture is not as pin sharp as it would be in, let say, day light, but after all you got pretty decent pictures from scene where other cameras will either cause unacceptable blur due to long exposure time or had to fire flash making everything black but very foreground.
Boxing and similar type of photography as i just realised is tough, you need to be on the side of the ring, and be lucky. Lucky to get nice shot, that means be comfortable to frame (how difficult is to focus on aligning to horizon when you need to watch out for kicks and punches), and have good timing, too. Usually you can be quick enough to take shot, but is worth to have sequence, just to get that frame of critical shot. And you need to be really careful, as they bounce against ropes, sometimes almost being throw out of the ring so be aware what is going on.
High ISO with hi frame rate combination gives a lot of photos to choose from, and that might be time consuming. Delete all photos with bad focus, without some good alignment, and without some sense.
You just need to be lucky and quick enough to capture something outstanding.
I like this shoot a lot, first few seconds of 5th round, kick when you wet cause all the water drops fly in the air. I remember seeing that in some boxing photography and i liked it. Now i have got my own one, first to start with.
