Split: SLR lenses for track action

Right so the options are in order of expense. Ive used ebay just as price and link examples for this thread.

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM starting point 365

CANON EF 70-200mm f/4 USM LENS 495

Sigma 70-200mm MK II f2.8 APO EX DG Macro HSM Seems a very good price and spec 600

CANON EF 70-200mm f/4 IS USM LENS Same as above canon but with IS 865 an extra 400

CANON EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 1255 Dogs *******s


For me the 2 options are start off with the Canon-EF-70-300mm-f-4-5-6-IS-USM lens then later upgrade to the CANON EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM.

Or just go straight for the Sigma 70-200mm MK II f2.8 APO EX DG Macro.
I like the idea of IS but with practice and some more experience this should not be so relevant.

Any thoughts.

 

Just seen the CANON EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM LENS for 962.50 which makes things more interesting

 

If you put a 1.5x teleconverter onto a 70-200 F2.8 you effectively have a 135-300 F4 lens.

The canon F4-5.6 70-300 would be a better buy (IMO) than the 70-200 F4 - by the time you've added a 1.5TC to get the 200 out to 300 it would be F5.6 anyway, so it would be slower at the short end, and shorter at the short end.

I am a big fan of the Sigma 70-200 F2.8 (which is why I use one)

*Generally* (and I've not owned both to compare) the Sigma EX DG is considered a better lens than the ordinary Canon lenses, but possibly not as amazing as the L series lenses.

IF you are good enough to be able to consistently get better results with the L series than an EX DG then it's worth the money. Very few people are, most of those that are make their living from photography.


I would still consider this...
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SIGMA-EX-100-...es_CameraLensesFilters_JN?hash=item2c52f1c8a0

Sigma 100-300mm F4. You can then get away with a 1.5 converter giving you 150-450mm at f5.6 all the way through.

One other thing is to look at replacing the 15-55 with something like
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sigma-24-70-2...es_CameraLensesFilters_JN?hash=item3359ff8ca6


although it does depend a bit on how much time you expect to spend shooting at the shorter end - remembering that there's less difference in short zooms between good and excellent, but much more of a difference when you get longer lenses. (To get F4 or F2.8 at the 200-300mm end you need a big objective lens - big lenses are much harder to get as accurate good quality than smaller lenses)

 

Just seen your latest post - and I agree that's a decent price for a really fantastic lens.

But you can buy two excellent lenses (short and long) for the price of one fantastic lens. Only you can decide if you will get the benefit of fantastic over merely excellent. I had to make that call myself and spent the money on slow cars and fast women - hence still having a camera that came out in 2003 and is out-dated by nearly every standard.

 

Cheers Dex, just weighing up all the options. And so many

Im still on the amateur side at the moment and probably would not get the benifit of an L series lense as yet. But i like my toys. The Sigmas look good and a sensible choice.

 

Thats not the IS version Pascal?

 

Yep you right sorry missed that.Thought it was a bit too cheap. Typed in the right spec but came up with this. These lenses are complicated Spec wise, very similar but subtle differences. Its change a lot since i did A Level photography

 

IMO for the majority of motorsport work you shouldn't need a particularly fast lens or IS since you should mostly be using slow shutter speeds and panning, which will give you good background / subject separation.

By the time the light's low enough for you to want IS the shutter speeds will probably be to slow to freeze the motion of a car on track, and only some varieties of IS will work with panning.

That said, for pretty much every other type of work a tele large apertures and IS are very helpful.

One more thing to consider is that I don't think the 1000D has optimised focussing for lenses of f/2.8 and faster, so could be a bit hit and miss with fast glass.

In your situation my choice would be the 70-200/4L or 70-300IS if you don't want to spunk over a grand on a 70-200/2.8L.

Not a huge fan of non-OEM lenses, but (as Dex's stuff attests to) people do get good results with them

 

I thought every canon body had 2.8 optimised CENTRE focus point?

Good point about fast glass... but they do focus faster as a rule!

 

Forgot about the focussing speed.. Personally from my own (limited) experience of motorsport when panning I usually pre-focus and the aperture is sufficiently stopped down to make slight variations irrelevant. Can't argue with faster focussing though

Re. the centre focus point; I know my old 350D didn't have this feature, and I vaguely remember reading that the 1000D focussing system was the same / similar. It's mentioned in the 40D specs on Dpreview but not in the 1000D specs on the same site..

 

We're getting two things mixed up here.

Panning:

Slow shutter speeds are exactly the time when you do need IS. Don't forget the need for IS is also focal length dependant, a 24mm prime doesn't need it, which is why it's not commonly fitted. But at 200mm it's essensial at low shutter speeds, because it allows you to go 2 - 3 stops slower. Which you may need when panning for your speed effect.


Catching action:

A fast lens will allow you to track a fast moving object better, by allowing faster shutter speeds under any given lighting condition. Although the faster shutter speeds may be detrimental to the panning effect. It will also isolate the subject better when the larger appertures are used. In my experience, a pro type lens will also focus much more reliably under panning conditions than a cheap plastic zoom.

 

I think there is quite a difference between *Needing* IS and *Wanting* IS. The problem with Canon's IS system is that you pay for it each time you buy a lens, if your technique is poor enough to need it all the time - or you are insistent on using massively slow shutted speed - then you are as well to buy a camera with in-body IS.*

High quality lens will tend to focus more reliably than cheap lenses. Fast high quality lenses even more so than slow ones.



*Disclaimer - I no longer do photography for money, it's now purely for pleasure. I enjoy the challenge of getting the best image I can, with the minimum of digital/electronic aids. For that same reason I don't spend hours on an image in post-processing. I believe the term is that I'm a "picture taker" not a "picture maker".
For those who see the image from the camera as the start point, not the product, and like to create and modify in PS, you will do well to take much of my advice with a pinch of salt. It's not that I have anything against Digital Art - as I have nothing against homosexuality - it's just not my thing.

 

Some wise words Dex.... Problem is it's TOO easy to fix poor photos in PP!!

 

Cheers guy's im learning loads here as well as getting geat info on what lenses to use.

Might be worth making a sticky

 

I know that is what is recommended but how do you actually do that?

I tried it at the Clio Cup at Donny, but found that there was nothing to focus on except the track itself and that was bright.

Also the position I was in the cars were coming three-quarters on at me, so wasn't even sideways on where at least they are a similar distance away all the time whilst panning.

Any tips?

 

What do people think about this. Seems a fantastic price from amazon but has a 1-2 month delivery time ??? Click here

 

I'm not sure we are

Certainly IS/VR was developed to reduce image blur at low shutter speeds, although it appears to me (again from my limited experience of this type of photography) that IS is of more use during static rather than panning situations. It seems that during panning vertical shake is damped to a certain degree by the horizontal panning motion.
I did try and find some information on the effectiveness of IS during panning but it appears elusive..

Again, I agree about the general superiority of fast / higher quality lenses, however it seems to me that most motorsport photography is shot from the side and panned; and hence usually requires a fairly small aperture to keep the shutter speeds slow enough to get some motion blur in the background.

Ultimately I don't think that fast lenses will offer as much benefit to motorsport photography than other situations; for example ice hockey / indoor football etc where the light is really low and there's less emphasis on "freezing" the action. Likewise, I think IS would be of more use in low light with slow / static subjects.

Happy to be proven otherwise if anyone has any credible links, since Motorsport is far from my forte and I've only done it a few times.

I'm certainly not the oracle on this subject, but again from my limited experience:

To pre-focus you want to set the lens to manual focus, watch for the line of the cars at the point where you'll be shooting and manually focus there (on the track is fine). You'll want a smallish aperture to give you an adiquate depth of field, whilst giving you a shutter speed that's long enough to give a decent background blur (play with the ISO to achieve this if necc).

Panning works best when you remain the same distance from the car throughout the pan - i.e on a bend where you're at it's centre, or most correctly the centre of the circle decribed by the car as it travels round the bend.

Attempting to pan when a car is partially coming towards you will cock things up a bit as obviously the distance separating you is constantly diminishing. Same with panning on straights; usually the best you can hope for is one portion of the car being sharp. Obviously these effects can be reduced by using a faster shutter speed, without reducing it too much that the car appears totally frozen; although conversely this can work fairly nicely for head on shots. Tbh it's all about experimentation

 

Hmm.. the cheapest one at the top seems a bit shifty (not great feedback) if blowing the fat end of a grand I'd want to feel I could trust the seller implicitly..

If it's any help I've dealt with Kerso on ebay before and was very happy with the transaction; he also does a roaring trade on the Talk Photography Forum

Also bought several expensive lumps of glass from 123fstop on ebay, too.

Both of the above were flogging grey imports (probably sourced from America or HK) however I think pretty much everything Canon (with the exception of bodies) is covered by an international warrenty so there shouldn't be an problems if you do have to claim on the warrenty.

 

The canon 70-200 etc lenses with IS have 2 IS modes... one which which is a panning mode!

 

Last night it was being sold by Amazon for 645 But had a 1-2 month delivery!!.

Very strange. We put it in our basket for later purchase. When we looked again this evening it had a note on it that the item had increase to 1,012ish

I have no idea why. It looked too good to be true hence why i posted it on here. When you use the link i posted it does not even come up now. Funny business me thinks.