Best Lens for sport???

[shoot_me]

Hi all

im am pretty new to using a dSLR so bare with me!!
im really interested in taking photos of rugby mountain biking and landscape. at the moment i have the standard 18-55 and a 50-200 lens, so all im askin for is a bit of advice.
1) do i have the right lens
2) if not what lens do i need
3) will a extra flash help me
4) not to expensive
and 5) i have a Pentax K-M

Thanks all Chris

[flake]

Like many things in photography it all depends how close you can get to the action, you've probably seen the huge white lenses on the sidelines at football matches, normally 400mm f/2.8 and cost about £7K. At least that gives you the kind of focal length you need although you're going to need to compromise on the aperture.

I'm afraid that there's no way to do this on the cheap, light is at a premium most of the time and fast long lenses are expensive. A slightly shorter lens would be the 120 - 300mm f/2.8 Sigma which stretches to a 420mm f/4 with a 1.4X TC however that will cost you around £2500, there's also the 100 - 300mm f/4 Sigma which loses a stop (half the light) but you can pick this lens up second hand on Ebay for around £500 or less.

The cheaper lenses are normally around f/5.6 (only 1/4 the light of the f/2.8) are so compromised in terms of focus speed and shutter speeds they can allow that I'd recommend you avoid them as they would return good results (unless the sun shines very brightly).

An extra flash will not help you unless you manage to install a speedotron system which again is a bit on the expensive side.

In terms of mountain biking you can get a lot closer (don't put yourself in danger) and a second slave flash might be useful. Again fast lenses are best so depending on you close you are several of Sigmas f/2.8 zooms would suit & wouldn't break the bank, 24 -70mm 50 - 150mm & 70 - 200mm

As for landscape a stable tripod and some stitching software !

The problem with the areas you want to photograph is that they need completely different lenses! sports need the long expensive fast glass and landscape the wider angle, slower apertures will do. Perhaps you need to have a think about where you want your photography to go first?

[shoot_me]

cheers for that, with the current lens i have with my Pentax like the 50-200 lens would that be ok for biking shots??? what about the 18-55 lens, where would this come in handy???

Ta Chris

[browndog 2]

Chris:
Get the flash and lookup strobist on the web ..........you dont need the big fancy flash Flake is suggesting

David

[shoot_me]

cheers david i will get lookin now!
what other things do i need??

[flake]

Browndog are you seriously suggesting that a flash gun will be sufficient for taking shots of rugby players? I can tell the OP it most certainly won't work, and you really will be wasting your money trying it.

As for bike shots it all depends on how far away you are, to stop action you really need at least 1/250 sec. Sometimes flash might be useful but most times it just isn't going to have the power unless your within a few feet, you can of course use a group of muliple flash heads, but then you run into costs similar to the big lenses.

On the old site there was a regular who photographed amateur football who used the 120 - 300mm f/2.8 Sigma, you might be able to get away with the 70 - 200mm if you can put up with losing all the long end of the lens, and a 1.4 TC will get you to 280mm at f/4.

Speedotron is about the only product on the market for illuminating spots arenas and they normally are pre installed and photographers pay to use them with pocket wizzard triggers, I wasn't suggesting you buy one, but it does give an indication of the power needed to get enough light for stop action photography. No amount of stobist technique is going to help illuminate a rugby pitch and if you did buy an extra powerful flash head I don't think the players would appreciate it much.

[browndog 2]

@ flake strangely i am not disagreeing with you i should have said ......get a flash for mountain biking
David

[ddraver@hotmail.com]

To be honest without spending gazillions s_m you re not going to get the best shots. Better to have a cheaper long lesna nd just wait untill the play occours on your side of the pitch so you can shoot at a wider (therefore faster aperture) setting. I got this from the uppermost teir at Wembly with the cheapest Tamron 55-200 lens, using the Sony alpha zoom thingum (for a change)





i ve not been lucky enought to get my mates to "pose" for me yest so I'm not so good for the MTBing, although a remote flashgun woudl help hugely, other wise you ll just have to use that "dappled light" photo effect that MBR is so fond of!

[bsmith]

I've been taking a lot of rugby lately using a 70-200 f2.8 have a look here http://www.flickr.com/photos/rkspics/
You have to know what the highest ISO setting you can use that still gives a clean enough image and that will let you get a reasonable speed to freeze the action. Have a look at images on flickr and you will see a link to more info, read that to see what ISO and aperture they are using to get a given speed, pray that your games are on bright sunny days to get the spped up and ISO down.

I never use flash, the players will linch you for blinding them and you will quickly leave the event.

[Andreu_YNWA]

Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but my experience in the hills taking photos of cyclists (on the road) suggests that you can get away with a wider lens but I think you have the advantage with cycling in that you can get up pretty close. You also need to pick your spot to take advantage of the lens i.e. usually low and pointing up towards the cyclist to take in the background (a bigger DoF). I have not experimented much with short DOFs as the mountains offer such a fantastic opportunity to get everything in. By the way I use 18-55 mm and it does me fine but I do a lot of running about to get the angle and distance to the cyclist right and I take a lot of shots at the moment to get any that are half decent - but it is possible with shorter glass. And landscape photos with this lens can be simply stunning!