Tamron 28-200 Lens

[Laxdad80]

Excellent ideas! I am rather new to photography and am just learning how to use my camera. Shooting sports is hard for a beginer therefore, I have been shooting in "Auto" mode. Could you explain "stop down the lens"?

 

[lonewolfsx]

Excellent ideas! I am rather new to photography and am just learning how to use my camera. Shooting sports is hard for a beginer therefore, I have been shooting in "Auto" mode. Could you explain "stop down the lens"?

Sure thing! When I say "stop down," I mean when you lower the aperture from max. For example if you had that f/2.8 lens, at f/2.8 only a very thin area of the image would be in focus. If you were to stop down to f/5.6, a wider area would be in focus, but you'd have to sacrific your shutter speed to keep the picture exposed (otherwise it would get progressively darker the more you stop down, until numbers like f/32.0 were it's almost black. Here's an easy example for your D7000: Turn the dial to put the camera into "Av" mode. This is "aperture priority," where you adjust the aperture of the lens with the command dial, but the camera does [almost] everything else. Look through your viewfinder at something, and this is that lens "wide open." Turn the command dial to an higher aperture number, for example f/16. Now look back through the finder, and press the DOF preview button, on the right side of the lens mount. It won't take a picture, but it'll stop down the lens and your viewfinder should be a bit darker, but you might notice more is in focus.

So if I were you, shooting sports, I'd probably use the camera on the Av mode, and turn that dial to keep it as wide open as possible. This will make the camera choose a faster shutter speed. If you're still getting blurry shots, you could raise your ISO. With the D7000 you have pretty awesome ISO performance, so I wouldn't be afraid to use 3200 or even 6400. Shoot, maybe even higher if they're not going to be printed very big or anything.
I'd avoid auto mode, as it will try to guess the minimum shutter speed you can hand-hold at (so with a lens at say, 50mm, it'll try to do "1/50" which is super slow), and lower the aperture to get a lot in focus, which isn't what you'd want for sports. Oh! and shoot on the "CH" mode, that camera does 6 frames per second. That's awesome, all of my sports were done at 3 fps, which is pretty slow.

 

[Laxdad80]

I bought the Sigma 70-200mm

Questions;

1. What happens when you press the DOF button? Do you just get an idea of what will be in focus or does it actually change the aperature to a smaller setting?

2. In your prior post you mentioned getting a shot of a check with blurr. That sounds real cool. I have never seen that in lacrosse before. In this case would I select shutter priority and select a slow shutter speed?

 

[lonewolfsx]

for 1- Well, both (it does physically stop down the lens, but it's for preview purposes). hmm.. let me preface this because it's hard to describe. The sigma lens you bought (btw I'm jealous now! Nice lens!) is at f/2.8, and the entire time it is on your camera body it's "wide open" at 2.8, until you press the shutter button. Then the mirror in the body folds up, the aperture blades in the lens lock into place (to whatever aperture setting you have selected in-camera), and the shutter fires which records the picture onto the sensor behind it. So the image you see in the viewfinder is always through a wide-open lens, and pressing/holding the DOF preview button simply stops down the lens to make it easier to guess what all will be in focus for that shot. That button stops the lens down to whichever aperture you have set in the camera for as long as you hold the button. It's only useful for lining up specific shots (and not really useful for sports at all), I almost never use it. I just wanted to demonstrate what stopping down was and that's a hands on way to show it.
-Here's a video of a normal camera shutter firing in slow motion so you can see how it works... at about 1:12 it shows the lens stopping down, then it opens up again to keep up the autofocus, then it stops down again for the next shot. Pretty amazing devices. [video=vimeo;39652026]http://vimeo.com/39652026[/video] Also this video is way over the top dramatic hahaha


2- Yes shutter priority would work for that situation, it'll take some trial and error to get the right speed so that it's not just a blurry mess. This is actually a super popular trick with motorsport photographers... have you seen those shots were the car is mostly sharp but the road or background is really blurred? That's because they intentionally left the shutter open longer (like 1/60 or less), while moving the camera with the car to keep it sharp. 1/60 is probably going to be too blurry for lacrosse though, I'd try something like 1/125 or maybe even 1/200... this would probably be easiest to try during a daytime game. Night games you're fighting so many other factors that it's harder to experiment with cool shots like that.