Hard-hitting, high-speed: kickboxing reportage with the Canon EOS R3

Danish photojournalist and Canon Ambassador Nikolai Linares is renowned for his sports reportage. Several years ago, he shot a celebrated story on kickboxer Youssef Assouik, who had escaped a tough life to become a K-1 fighting world champion. When the pair recently got in touch again, Youssef told him about Musa, a 12-year-old boy who was training at his gym in Copenhagen, Denmark. "He told me that Musa had big dreams – and was also a great talent," he says.

Nikolai decided he also wanted to document Musa's story, and was keen to see how the EOS R3, Canon's high-speed EOS R System flagship camera would cope in this hard-hitting world. It certainly didn't disappoint. "This camera is so fast at detecting and tracking people, even in bad light, that all I had to do was shoot. And that's exactly what you want as a photographer," he says.

Nikolai explains that he doesn't like to plan shots to any great extent when he's covering a story like Musa's, as he prefers to see what develops naturally. "I knew that I wanted something with his trainer, Youssef, in it," he explains. "Something that showed Youssef as a mentor to look up to instead of being this tough coach. That was the main image I had in my mind before I started shooting. I also wanted something with Musa hanging out with his brothers after the gym, but that's as far as my plans went."

To provide flexibility on the shoot, Nikolai relied on two RF zooms: the Canon RF 28-70mm F2L USM and the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM. The shorter, slightly faster lens acted as Nikolai's primary. "It might be a little heavy, but the fast maximum aperture means that it's really good in low light," he says. "I'd tend to use a longer lens when I'm photographing a fight, but as I was shooting training sessions, it was possible to go into the ring with the RF 28-70mm F2L USM on the camera."

Nikolai switched to the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM mainly to get some close handheld shots of facial expressions. The IS in the lens combined with the Canon EOS R3's in-body image stabilisation (IBIS) provided up to 7.5-stops of stability, enabling him to capture images free of camera shake, even while moving around.

The Canon EOS R3's ability to shoot at 30fps with AE and AF tracking gave Nikolai an edge during the training sessions, too. "I didn't need to shoot at this speed the whole time, but when Musa was doing something where I felt it would be hard to capture the right moment, such as when he was hitting a punchbag, I pushed the camera to its limits."

Following each day's gym session, Nikolai travelled to Musa's home in the suburbs of Copenhagen to capture the family relaxing together.

To make sure that he could achieve natural-looking 'fly-on-the-wall' shots, the photographer took advantage of the Canon EOS R3's silent shutter function. A new customisation option enables the camera to be instantly set to silent shooting with a flick of the Live View shooting/Movie shooting switch, and there's even a new shutter volume function that lets you adjust the sound of the electronic shutter on the occasions when you need it to be audible.

"Normally, I do like a little bit of sound," explains Nikolai. "Even when you're shooting a portrait in a quiet environment, I like the people who I'm photographing to be able to tell when I've taken the picture."

The Canon EOS R3's improved Dual Pixel CMOS AF II didn't hesitate in picking out the faces of the family when they were all together. "The face detection would highlight all of the faces in the viewfinder and let me quickly cycle through them to choose the one that I wanted to follow," he says.

The autofocus also proved useful when Nikolai was photographing Musa with his brothers, enjoying a lively game of football. Nikolai took advantage of the vari-angle screen here, to get some dynamic low-level views. The EOS R3's screen and new EVF, which maintains a constant speed even in low light, are both higher resolution than on the Canon EOS R5 that Nikolai is used to, and the camera itself is more substantial, too.

"Before the Canon EOS R5, I spent at least 10 years shooting with Canon EOS 5D bodies. But even though the EOS R3 is the largest camera I've used, it felt really good in the hand. The battery life was better than what I've grown accustomed to as well." A longer battery life will certainly come in handy for Nikolai's long-form picture essays.

So, how long does he see himself following Musa's story? "It's difficult to say when a story is complete, but I don't feel that this one is done yet," he suggests. "I haven't had the chance to be at a real fight with Musa, for example, and I think that needs to be part of his story as well. This is a young guy with great potential, and in time we'll all know how far his journey takes him – we just don't know it yet."

¹ When used with an f/1.2 lens (except lenses with a Defocus Smoothing (DS) coating), centre point AF, one shot mode at room temperature at ISO100.