Another Lens Question

[tacomadm18]

O.K,, so after more thought on some type of Zoom lens,,, I'm thinking the most zoom I will be using 90% of the time is like for kids sports, soccer, B-Ball, etc,,, plus the inside pics, for birthday, holidays etc,,,, I really would like to stay with one lens,,, (I don't want to get out of control with this sport) like a 17-85mm or 18-85mm give or take,,,, Since I'm trying to stay with one lens maybe a budget of 4 or 5 hundred,,, used or new,,,

thanks

 

[Village Idiot]

Ellipsis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What type of sports? Even a 70-200 struggles on the long end when shooting something like soccer...

And for your budget, you're probably better off with maybe two lenses because for 4-5 hundred, the lenses you can afford will probably be super zooms that are pretty soft and variable aperture which is going to be horrible for in door and low light photos...

 

[stevemunoz]

Not sure what camera system you are shooting with so hard to give advice. If your a Canon shooter, I'd get a 50 1.8 II for $100 for the indoor lowlight photography, and try to find a used 70-200 4L for the sports side. You may have to do a bit of running up/down the field to keep the 200mm focal length long enough, but it is a great lens and a great bargain. Both of these lenses also make for great portrait lenses as well.

Hope this helps.

Steve

 

[KmH]

As mentioned you'll need at least 200 mm and I agree that will be a bit short on reach for soccer, but if you have good images you can always do a heavy crop to increase the subject scale in the final image.

I use a 150 mm-500 mm zoom lens for field sports like soccer.

Also mentioned is a 2 lens solution rather than a single super zoom.

Making a lens that can cover a very wide range of zoom, say 18 mm to 200 mm, involves an overlapping series of compromises that negatively effect image quality. They will also not perform very well indoors where there is frequently not enough light for the camera to use a fast enough shutter speed to stop motion, unless your camera has good ISO performance and you don't mind grainy pictures.

If image quality is not a primary concern then an 18-200 mm super zoom is your 1 lens solution.

They are available from Canon, Nikon, Sigma, and Tamron.