digital camera recommendations (for hockey arena)

[jfall]

My sister is looking for a new digital camera, and she came to me with some questions.. but honestly I don't have a lot of experience with digital cameras. Right now she has a 4mp olympus camera that she is looking to replace with something better.

99% of the pictures my sister takes are in a hockey arena, most of the time she is shooting through plexiglass from maybe 30-50ft. away from the ice. What should she look for, something with a good optical zoom? she is looking to spend around $1,000 canadian / 750 usd.

Any recommendations?

 

[LizM]

I got some good results with my Canon Digital Rebel. I set it on action and had no issues.

 

[Sharkbait]

I'm one of the team photographers for the Indiana Ice hockey club, and I shoot a Canon 300D. I'd gotten passable results with the cheap-o $200 Canon 70-300 f4-5.6 EF lens, but the shots required a lot of tweaking in PS to bring up brightness or get rid of ISO noise. I just picked up a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 lens, so I'm really anxious to try it out in a few weeks.

The trick with hockey games is balancing between the fast shutter speeds (I usually shoot around 1/250s) and getting enough light into the camera. At long zooms that can really become a problem (hence me moving to the big 2.8).

Feel free to drop me an email ( [email protected] ) if you've got more questions. Oh, and you can see some of my hockey shots at: http://www.whitesharkphoto.com/hockey.htm