Sports Lenses

Hillsong · Aug 31, 2010

My only concern with something like the 150-500 is it has a much lower aperture than the 80-200 f/2.8 might have, even with a TC

table1349 · Aug 31, 2010

Hillsong said:
My only concern with something like the 150-500 is it has a much lower aperture than the 80-200 f/2.8 might have, even with a TC

If you know what venues you will be shooting in I would go check them out. Even the best venues in this area are still dark when it come to photographing action. Primes are my general indoor choice for fast shutter speeds and decent ISO's From the base line the 85 will give you good near court coverage. For far court I usually us the 200 f2 on a second body. If you are going to be seriously shooting sports you will probably want to consider at least a second body in the near future and eventually 3 bodies depending on the sports you are shooting.

Your assessment of the 150-500 is correct. An f5-6.3 is far to slow to use in any indoor venue for basketball that I know of. Outdoors on a bright sunny day it would work but mid/late afternoon shadows could be an issue at f5 when trying to keep a 1/500th shutter speed minimum. Plus you DOF would be lousy when trying to isolate action.

Hillsong · Aug 31, 2010

I do actually have a second body (Nikon d70s) that i could use for wider shots (perhaps using a 50 f/1.8, or even my kit 18-70 f/3.5-4.6) while using something along the lines of the 80-200 f/2.8 for closer shots (using the d300 body for better AF during movement).

You mention 1/500th shutter speed. What is the lowest shutter speed you will drop to in an indoor game in order to freeze motion. 1/200th? Also, what ISO do you typically shoot at with your F/2 in an indoor gym?

Thanks!

table1349 · Sep 1, 2010

Hillsong said:
I do actually have a second body (Nikon d70s) that i could use for wider shots (perhaps using a 50 f/1.8, or even my kit 18-70 f/3.5-4.6) while using something along the lines of the 80-200 f/2.8 for closer shots (using the d300 body for better AF during movement).

You mention 1/500th shutter speed. What is the lowest shutter speed you will drop to in an indoor game in order to freeze motion. 1/200th? Also, what ISO do you typically shoot at with your F/2 in an indoor gym?

Thanks!

I never get lower than 1/250th indoors and even then you will get some motion blur depending on the angle of the shot. You will also get some motion blur if you catch the ball in mid dribble rather than the top of the apex or on the ground. I try to stay in the 1/320th range at least. That is one of the reasons fast primes are my choice indoors.

Not only am I thinking of keeping my shutter speed up and my ISO as low as possible, but I have better control of my DOF with an f1.8 wide open. I can capture just the action in focus and everything else is just varying degrees of bokeh. Makes the action pop of the page.

Christians86 · Sep 25, 2010

Hillsong said:
I posted another thread (it is more directly aimed at experiences with certain lenses, which was the reason i started a new thread) clarifying my budget and the situation I'm in now (lost a job, then got another!) so the money will start coming in soon. As i mentioned in the other post, I will have a budget of around $800 in a few months if my budget goes as planned. (Mens Basketball starts in November, so thats when I have till essentially) Correct me if I'm wrong, but a prime lens will generally produce sharper images than a zoom? That is why I am leaning towards a prime. I currently use a 28-300 and a 18-70, both of which are kit lenses . Hopefully the new information can help ya'll help me!

Thanks again for all the input!

For basketball I have used both 70-200 and 200 F2 (the last one is a pain to use due to the weight, but shutterspeed isn't a problem). Since you have a cropcamera - D300, I would think that 70-200 VR or VR2 could be a good start. On a cropcamera it would be like105-300 mm if the D300 is a 1,5 crop?
If you plan to jump on FF (Fullframe) I would suggest to jump on VR2, not VR as I remember when I had it and used it on my D700 I had a lot of problems with vingetting and softning to some extend. If you plan on keeping the D300 for a good while the VR should be quite good, and is quite cheap. In Norway in dropped from 15 000 kr (August 09) to 8900 kr (August 10) used, due to the new VR2.