Express Action Sports

I have the Canon Rebel T1i, and I’m looking to take better pictures of outdoor sports as well as indoor events. I currently have the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/1.4-5.6 IS, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, as well as a Canon EF 50mm f/1-1.8. Would a Speedlight be beneficial? Or more cost efficient?

It sounds like you have the lenses that should do the job. There are of course better faster lenses but they cost a ton of money. What I think you need to do is learn how to use your camera better. A good class in photography and some practice will improve your pictures.

The 55-250mm should do a fine job with outdoor sports during the day. You will have trouble with it indoors or at night because of the small aperture. The 50mm F1.8 should do a good job with indoor sports if you are reasonably close.

A flash is not recommended though. It would be completely useless with outdoor sports as the action would be too far away for the the flash to be effective. Indoors it would work if you were within about 30ft. but do you really want to be sending a bright flash in the athletes eyes over and over again. I think they might have a problem with that.

If you really want to upgrade lenses be prepared to lay out some serious cash. The 70-200mm F2.8 IS lens is nearly $2,000. A 50mm F1.2 is also nearly $2,000 and a 24-70mm F2.8 or 18-55mm F2.8 are over $1,000.

Im currently in high school and Im going to begin doing sports photography with a Nikon D7000. Im going to be shooting both indoor sports and outdoor sports. Id like to get something with a large zoom capacity, but could also go wide angle. I dont care if its Tamron or Sigma or some other brand as long as its a good lens.My budget is under $900. Thanks!

When shooting indoor or night sports you need a lens with a f/2.8 aperture and even then you will be shooting at 3200 ISO.

The Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 costs almost $2,000 and that lens is the one used for shooting along the baseline of basketball or sidelines of other court games.

I use a Nikkor 300 mm f/2.8 when shooting cross court at basketball games and football as well as baseball.

When shooting outdoors, then you can use lenses that have smaller maximum lens apertures, so they will fall within your budget.

Here are two shots using the Nikkor 300 mm f/2.8

http://s862.photobucket.com/albums/ab182/fotomanaz/Answers%20album/?action=view&current=i_AIA3008copy.jpg

http://s862.photobucket.com/albums/ab182/fotomanaz/Answers%20album/?action=view&current=iBonnerInAirc.jpg

As you can see, when shooting under low light conditions, you do need a fast lens. If shooting shots during day time games, the AF-S 70-300 mm VR lens is fine. The f/5.6 lens aperture at 300 mm is not going to be a hindrance when used in bright sun or even overcast days

Here is a link to all the Nikkor lenses that are available.

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Camera-Lenses/All-Lenses/index.page

If you had a Nikon D3, you could shoot at ISO 6400 using a nice 200-400 mm f/4 lens, but again, those tools are too far out of your budget.

As you are going to learn, the cost of the tools used by sports photographers are quite high.

I have a Canon Rebel T3. I take a lot of sports pictures mostly basketball and volleyball so indoor sports. I have a 18-55mm lens and a 75-300mm lens.. I usually use the 75-300 and I get really good pictures! but I was wondering if there are better lens’ for sports that wont cost more then around 200 dollars or so. thanks so much! or any tips on getting better indoor sports pictures would be great too!

There’s really no good lens you can buy for $200. Unfortunately, the price is everything when it comes to lens. For fast action, you need a lens with a large aperture. Unfortunately, the larger the aperture, the more expensive, exponentially. Check out the pros with those bazooka style lens, that what it takes to freeze the action from far away. But those will cost you tens of thousands of dollars.

What you can do is try to get closer to the action, that way you don’t have to zoom as much. Also, try to pan with the action. With enough practice, you can actually get a nice focus shot of a moving object. So like when a basketball player jumps up diagonally, pan your camera in the same direction. You can get some cool effects with the player being in focus and the background blurred.

Hope this helps,
-Wei
www.artofwei.com

Looking for a good digital camera. What is important to me is to be able to take pictures fast (sports etc) and not have blurry shots. Not looking to spend to much but I was thinking around $300 for a good one. The other area of a camera I like to have is the zoom option. Can you help me recommend a good one? Thanks for the help.

For freezing the action for sports (especially indoor sports) you will need a DSLR camera. Point and shoot cameras have a very small image sensor, which means they do not work well in indoor lighting without a flash, and have shutter lag between the time you press the shutter button and the photo is taken (this means you will miss most of your actions shots).

In addition, you will need a fast lens for the DSLR camera to get enough light to the camera’s sensor to allow for a fast shutter speed.

Total cost of a new DSLR body and a fast lens will be anywhere from $700-$2000. Even at the $700 range, that camera will only shoot about 3 frames per second, which is pretty slow for sports action.

My goals: freezing the action of live performers even if the lighting is not too bright.

Additional: What lens should I be using? I prefer a zoom lens so that I could frame the subjects better.

First and foremost you’ll need a camera that allows you full manual control.

Freezing action is a function of shutter speed. Shutter speed is a product of light, lens aperture (f-stop) and ISO. In concert situations where the light is usually dim you’ll have to "open up" your lens and increase your ISO. As you increase ISO, image quality begins to suffer. Noise Reduction circuitry helps but its no cure-all. As you "open up" your lens, its performance declines – most all lenses give their best results at between f5.6 and f11. A lens wide open, say at f2.0 or f2.8 will admit the most light but the edges won’t be as sharp and you’ll see some light fall-off from center to edge. As in all things there are no solutions only trade-offs.

Turning now to my trusty FotoSharp "Day & Night Exposure Guide" we find:
Indoor sports, circus – floodlit suggests:
f2.8 @ 1/125 @ ISO 800
f4.0 @ 1/60 @ ISO 800
f2.8 @ 1/250 @ ISO 1600
f4.0 @ 1/125 @ ISO 1600

School stage/auditorium suggests:
f2.8 @ 1/30 @ ISO 800
f4.0 @ 1/15 @ ISO 800
f2.8 @ 1/60 @ ISO 1600
f4.0 @ 1/30 @ ISO 1600

About all you can do is decide what image quality is going to be acceptable to you. To get a zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f2.8 is probably going to be expensive. Sigma offers a 50-150mm f2.8 zoom for around $700.00 and a 70-200mm f2.8 for around $900.00. A Canon 70-200mm f2.8 is around $1,150.00

The Sigma 50-150 is only for use with cameras using the APS-C sensor. Its image circle is too small for a film camera or a larger than APS-C sensor.

A good monopod might help you go to a slower shutter speed but then you might not be able to freeze action as you said you wanted to.

Trying to take photos of my sons basketball game. There is enough light to take without a flash but on auto setting, images are blurry. When i set to manual mode and a fast shutter speed there doesn’t appear to be enough light. Wondering if I need a bigger flash or different settings.

David Hobby from the Baltimore Sun has a great short description of a simple technique including two flash units and remote triggers here.
There is another great source for sports in general by Jerry Lodriguss, see here for more.

In principle you want a shutter speed shorter than 1/200. Use a fast lens, get close to the action. Set your white balance to custom and use a grey card to take a shot that allows the camera to evaluate the white balance. This saves endless time tweaking it later.

I am a real novice. Only used a point and shoot before, so please don’t get too technical on me. I’m trying to shoot indoor volleyball. I bought the camera to eliminate the shutter lag, but now what?

You should find yourself using the 55-200mm lens more often than the 18-55mm. The 18-55 is useful for wide shots of the game and the crowd but will do little to bring in any action.

Since the lenses you have aren’t very fast (open the aperture as wide as possible) and the games are indoor you’ll either need to use a flash or a higher ISO (ISO 800+ should be adequate). Keep the shutter speed as fast as possible to minimize blur. The pop-up flash is nice but will not help you at a distance. I’d suggest buying a Speedlight or a cheap slave at the very least.

If you have no idea what I’ve just said, just use the sports scene mode and the camera should automate everything for you to the best of its ability.

I need a list of extreme sports you can do inside for a project. Can anyone help out with a list of as many as you can think of or a link to a website where I can find this information? Thanks in advance.

Skateboarding
BMX
Aggressive inline skating
Snowboarding
Motocross

Also,what are some other needed equipment for capturing action shots?

I have a Nikon D80 with 18-55 mm lens and 75-300mm lens.

For outdoor sports photography the 70-300 mm VR is an excellent lens

For indoor sports photography, I use the 70-200 mm f2.8 which is fast enough.

My friends who shoot NBA games usually include the 200 mm f/2.0 lens in addition to the 70-200 mm f/2.8