 Dionis |
what lens to buy I need to buy a new lens to get better soccer pictures at night. Also what do you suggest for inside a gym for action shots in poor light. I have a cannon rebel digital eos. Also where do you suggest I purchase them for the best price. dionis
|
|
|
|
||
|
robert G. Fately |
Dionis, what you are looking for is what's called a "fast lens" - that is, one that has a large maximal aperture to let in the most amount of light possible. Now, gym sports and soccer are a bit different in that you will probably be further away from the action in a soccer game. But in general, you want to find the fastest lens you can afford - an f-stop of f1.8 or 1.4 for a short telephoto (like an 80MM lens) and for the longer teles something in an f2.8. Be warned, these can cost serious money. These are the big lenses you see the pros on the sidelines of sports arenas using. You'll probably want a zoom (that is, variable focal length) lens for the long telephoto work - so something like an 80-200 f2.8 makes sense most times. You don't mention what brand of gear you have now - if it's Canon or Nikon you can look at the lenses they offer. There are some brands that make pretty good gear at lower prices - Sigma, Tamron and Tokina come to mind - these companies sell versions of their lenses for multiple brands of camera so they benefit from the economy of scale. As for where to buy - if you want to look online check out B&H Photo (www.bhphotovideo.com) and Adorama (www.adorama.com). These are both NY based retailers with well-deserved excellent reputations.
|
|
|
|
||
|
Dionis |
Thanks. I am using a cannon with a 300 zoom. When it starts to get dark the subject is either too dark or not focused. It seems that its okay on my screen until I get home and find that it is too blurry to use. I have a digital rebel and I usually use the action setting. I can take still pictures with no problem with a flash. I have tried with an extra flash and that made it worse. I have no problem with daytime action pictures at all, just at night. I am no expert and I am still learning.
|
|
|
|
||
|
robert G. Fately |
Hi, Dionis, You don't mention it, but my guess is that your Canon lens is a relatively slow version of 300MM, something like f 5.6. Here's what's going on with you: First, you need to understand that proper exposure is the result of enough light hitting the CCD chip. You can set the ships sensitivity (that's the ISO number) - where a higher ISO means more sensitive but also creates more digital noise (kind of like grain in film). Once you set the ISO, the next thing to recognize is that there is only a certain amount of light in the gym. If it's brightly lit, or if it's dark, there's not much you can do about it. Your flash doesn't have enough power to work beyond 20 or so feet, so anything further away is not helped with that, either. So now you have a set sensitivity, and there's a room that has lots of or little light. To get the proper exposure requires a combination of f-stop (how much light gets through the lens) and shutter speed (how long the light is allowed to pass through). These two things are inversely related - they both are set in "halves and doubles". That is, f5.6 lets in half the light of f4, which is half as fast as f2.8, which is half again of f2. Meanwhile, 1/60th of a second is twice as long as 1/125th second, which is twice as long as 1/250th second. So far, so good? So. The light meter in the camera measures the light in the room and figures out what f-stop and shutter speed combination will get enough light to the chip. But you don't have to follow what it sets - if you change the aperture from f8 to f5.6, you are letting twice as much light through the lens. So, you can then change the shutter speed from 1/125th to 1/250th. Let's review - f8 at 1/125th = f5.6 at 1/250th. Of course, if the room is too dark to properly expose the chip, that's a different story, but let's just think of this as an outdoor at noon type of thing for the moment. Now, shutter speed also freezes action (if it's fast enough) or allows for blur due to motion (if it's too slow). With your 300MM lens, the rule of thumb is that the slowest shutter speed you should use is 1/500th of a second - anything slower and your own body movement will cause blur. But, as you can figure out now, you need a pretty fast lens with a wide aperture to allow you to use 1/500th of a second shutter speed. When you review stuff on the LCD on the camera, you really can't see enough detail to figure out if the shot's really in focus - that's a limitation of the LCD screen itself. Also, when things get too dark, auto-focus mechanisms tend to have a hard time, as they rely on contrast to work and contrast gets low when lighting is nil. I hope that makes some sense to you - get a piece of paper and run the f-stops and shutter speeds in two rows so you can see how as one goes double the other goes half. Maybe that will help.
|
|
|
|
||
|
This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here
Report this Thread |
||