Express Action Sports

I am new to SLR camera and just got my new Nikon D90 with 18-55mm lens. Need suggestion to get my next lens. I wanted to shot potraits and close-up image and also my relative wedding photo soon.

It depends.

If you want to include action, sports and wildlife in your subjects, the next lens will either be the 55-200 mm to extend your reach or a 18-200 mm VR which will replace the lens you have now and add the additional extension to your cameras view in one lens

If you are into shooting landscapes, the 10-24 mm lens will be your best bet.

If you love shooting things like flowers close up, the 60 mm macro will be a good choice.

As you can see, you have to define your subjects before anyone can really suggest a "next" lens to you.

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 bought a Nikon D40x a couple of weeks ago with the standard 18-55 lense…I’m attending the NASCAR races next weekend and would like to buy a better lense to take action shots of the cars. The races will start in daylight and end late at night. What lense(s) would you recommend? (I would like to stay under $300)

You’d probably like to have about 300 mm as your long end of the zoom, but you won’t find that under $300. The new Nikon 55-200 VR lens at $250 might be a good choice. 200 mm is pretty decent, actually, and the VR will help you continue to get shots as it gets darker and they are running under the lights. This is an AF-S lens, so it will autofocus on your D40x. You would not be happy with a non-autofocus lens at a NASCAR event.

Since you know what you can do with the 18-55 lens, go to my page on focal lengths and see where the 55-200 range picks up. This is NOT a lens test or a camera test! It is merely intended to show the difference between various focal lengths. The camera was a Nikon D200 and the lens was the Nikon 18-200 VR lens. There is further explanation on the image itself. It would help if you click on "All Sizes" above the image.

I have NO IDEA why Yahoo! will not let me put a link to my Flickr page in this answer, when it has been fine in other answers tonight…

I do sports (action) photography with a Nikon D80 (thinking of upgrading to the D300 btw) … I want to get a faster lens and am considering the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR or the 80-200mm f2.8 (without VR).

Given that the new vibration-reduction model costs about twice as much (around $1,700, I think, versus $900) … would it be worth getting for my purposes (handheld sports photography)?

Really, my question is: Since I always use fast shutter speeds (always faster than 1/200, usually more like 1/1000 or more) is there any advantage to VR, or is the fast shutter speed itself enough to essentially eliminate the effects of camera shake?

Appreciate any input on this…

If you are only using this lens for sport photography and absolutely nothing else, and you are constantly using that very fast shutter speed, then the VR is not really going to be much of an advantage for you.

If, however, you plan to use the lens for things other than just sport photography, perhaps for portraits or scenic photography, the VR would come in handy especially for hand-holding some longer-exposure shots.

Hope that helps you out some 🙂