Sports photography lens

[imagemaker46]

I'd rather use my gear to its fullest. That includes maxing out the frame rate when needed.

From what I've heard, one very good shot out of 100 is actually a fairly good ratio.

The op is interested in taking good pictures of his son now. I fail to see how your earlier comment helps him in any way.

One good shot out of 100 is a fairly good ratio? Are you serious? Even if I wasn't just talking sports photography, a ratio like that would be enough for me to sell all my gear. I shoot sports, and am usually somewhere around 75-90%, my clients wouldn't be my clients very long if I was shooting at 1%

What I said made perfect sense. Old story my dad told me, just after motor drives came into use. Two newspaper photographers show up to shoot a new rocket car, all the excitment is when the rocket car fires it's engiine, big blast of fire out the back. First photographer shows up with medium format single frame at a time camera, other photographer has the "newest" motor drive and all 35mm, he's not going to miss this. Car fires up, big blast of fire, motor drive fires off frame after frame, they run through the process one more time, just to make sure, same thing again. Next day the two photographers are talking, guy with the motor drive is all disappointed, he says to other photographer, I shot 30 pictures and missed the fire completely, I don't know what to do. The other guy says, you can have one of mine, I got it twice.

 

[JSER]

why would you ever need 12 fps? Learn proper timing!

I agree why do you need 12 fps unless you have not learnt timing5 fps is fast enough

Sigma 120-400 and 60D

 

[Kolia]

Before spending more money on new gear, I recommend reading David Busch's Guide to the A77.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1133597130/ref=cm_sw_em_r_am_ip_am_us?ie=UTF8

I'm almost thought his A65 guide and found it very helpful in understanding the options the camera offers.

 

[Kolia]

The OP shoots a 12fps simply because his camera can. Just like you guys who I'm sure will use the max fps your respective camera can give when necessary.

Timing is important, but it's not the issue at hand.

 

[Derrel]

Tennis does not require an exceptionally long focal length lens at most venues. Usually one can get relatively close to the court, and as such, a fast telephoto lens would be best,especially for night-time tennis under artificial lighting. Sony's 135mm f/1.8 would be nice, as would be their 85mm f/1.4, but both are above the budget by a bit. Considering the budget, I guess the Sigma 70-200 2.8, the newer,faster-focusing HSM model would be the best option.

 

[imagemaker46]

The OP shoots a 12fps simply because his camera can. Just like you guys who I'm sure will use the max fps your respective camera can give when necessary.

Timing is important, but it's not the issue at hand.

As the OP is using his gear to shoot sports, timing is everything. Shooting sports is all about understanding the sport, anticipation, timing and concentration. I do from time to time shoot in bursts, but most of the time I shoot 1-2 frames at a time and wait for the action to come to me, that is where the understanding of a sport comes into play.

As I said earlier, overshooting is a sign of inexperience and lack of confidence. Ending up with 1 out of 100 is a lack of skill.

 

[Kolia]

Imagemaker, the OP is an amateur as most of us here are. I understand where you're coming from and I agree with you that simply pulling the trigger in the hopes of getting something nice isn't the way to go. On the other hand, with digital shoots being "free", taking a lot of pictures isn't a problem. I think high frame rate doesn't necessarily mean overshooting. Plus, who knows if the one image you got was potentially the best one of that specific action ? In a set of 1, that image will always be the best one...

The reason why 12 FPS might not be a good idea here is because of the compromises the camera makes to achieve that rate. The regular high speed (6 or 8 fps) might be better.

Having a picture with the meta data would be really useful now.

 

[imagemaker46]

I realize that almost everyone on here is an amateur, so I can only offer my opinion as a long time professional photographer, mostly shooting sports. My style of shooting has not really changed much from when I was shooting film. It was necessary to shoot light, just from the simple cost factor of film. What I try and teach other photographers is that just because you can shoot 100's of frames, there is no need to, if you learn to shoot like it's film, even if they've never shot a roll of film.

Getting the best shot of that specfic action is where the understanding of the sport comes into play. Hitting the peak action for any sport comes with experience in shooting that sport. There are some sports that I haven't shot before, but after a short while would understand where the peak is, I still wouldn't shoot alot just because I could. I have sat next to other "photographers" they are getting paid for what they do, but they are amateur in the way that they shoot. I would walk away with 200-250 images, and one guy I sat next to, he filled 10 5GB cards, because he could, like you said "free" What did he end up with maybe 10 usable images. It's all about shooting smart, not wearing your camera out, and not wasting time sitting a computer, wondering where the 10,000 images came from that all look like crap.

 

[Kolia]

I realize that almost everyone on here is an amateur, so I can only offer my opinion as a long time professional photographer, mostly shooting sports. My style of shooting has not really changed much from when I was shooting film. It was necessary to shoot light, just from the simple cost factor of film. What I try and teach other photographers is that just because you can shoot 100's of frames, there is no need to, if you learn to shoot like it's film, even if they've never shot a roll of film.

Getting the best shot of that specfic action is where the understanding of the sport comes into play. Hitting the peak action for any sport comes with experience in shooting that sport. There are some sports that I haven't shot before, but after a short while would understand where the peak is, I still wouldn't shoot alot just because I could. I have sat next to other "photographers" they are getting paid for what they do, but they are amateur in the way that they shoot. I would walk away with 200-250 images, and one guy I sat next to, he filled 10 5GB cards, because he could, like you said "free" What did he end up with maybe 10 usable images. It's all about shooting smart, not wearing your camera out, and not wasting time sitting a computer, wondering where the 10,000 images came from that all look like crap.

Total agree.

 

[imagemaker46]

I drifted off what the Op was askingabout in the first place. All I said was a faster lens. I would look at a 70-200 2.8 for tennis, especially as it is his son and he does have more range of movement within the courts.

 

[JSER]

The OP shoots a 12fps simply because his camera can. Just like you guys who I'm sure will use the max fps your respective camera can give when necessary.

Timing is important, but it's not the issue at hand.

NO

 

[JSER]

The OP shoots a 12fps simply because his camera can. Just like you guys who I'm sure will use the max fps your respective camera can give when necessary.

Timing is important, but it's not the issue at hand.

As the OP is using his gear to shoot sports, timing is everything. Shooting sports is all about understanding the sport, anticipation, timing and concentration. I do from time to time shoot in bursts, but most of the time I shoot 1-2 frames at a time and wait for the action to come to me, that is where the understanding of a sport comes into play.

As I said earlier, overshooting is a sign of inexperience and lack of confidence. Ending up with 1 out of 100 is a lack of skill.

A1 100%

 

[DiskoJoe]

Get a sigma 70-200 f2.8 or a Minolta 80-200 f2.8. Both are good glass. Alternatively you could get a Zeiss Sonnar 135mm f1.8. All options double as nice portrait lenses as well.

 

[JusLookN]

I would actually recommend the Sigma 70-200 F2.8 as the question was asked. The 70-300 is just not fast enough. I've read the whole thread, even when the topic switched to frame rate. I agree with it all, but as Imagemaker stated ; when you learn with film you learn to save your shots. Now with that said, I would recommend he start with the normal fps if he wants to shoot bursts and work his way up to the number he likes. Some of those action pics with motion stitched look pretty good!

 

[Tony S]

OP.... You need a faster lens for night shooting. The one you have will work "ok" for shooting in good daylight, but you need to also learn to control the camera. The reason your images come out soft are probably two fold, the camera not tracking the moving player and your shutter speed not fast enough to stop the movement of the player. My bet is on the second cause.

You will get a nice sharp image on the background because it's not moving, but the shutter speeds are not fast enough to stop the movement of the player. Getting your shutter speeds up over at least 1/400 will help with stopping action on younger slower moving players. You might have to bump your ISO up to get fast enough shutter speeds.

For night shooting you are going to need the faster lens so you can get enough light in at the faster shutter speeds and not push your camera into the ISO range that will give you too much noise.

It would help if you put up a few shots of what you have that has the exif info attached to it (or just post the camera settings with the shots)

Work on your timing, that comes with shooting more sports and will result in many more keepers. Even at 12fps you are going to get a series of 3 shots on a swing, before the ball, just missing the ball, and the reacket in front of the face on the follow though. The rest are either before or after those events.