What telephoto lense?

[Cutter]

Hi everyone
hope to get a new lens for Christmas for my canon50d , I want to take photos up to 30 mtrs away and to have a crisp photo that will freeze action, about £1000.00
chees

[GerryBateson]

Limite info but from my experience you'd be shooting up towards 200 mm There are lots of options that will cover that range.

[ImageArcade]

For £1k there are plenty of options. The one I’ve had most experience with (and thoroughly recommend) would be the Canon 70-200mm f4 IS L.

It’s light and small (for the quality if offers), is pin sharp, has excellent IS and is very highly regarded amongst all that use it.

On your 50D it’s a 112 – 320mm equivalent, which should suit most needs, but if you shop around you may squeeze the 1.4 extender to give you 448mm at the long end in under your budget.

Cheers,
Steve

ImageArcade – Photography By Steve Ayres

[flake]

For me £1000 would buy a second user Sigma 120 - 300mm f/2.8 although you say the images will be 30 metres away you don't say the size of the subject and there's a big difference between a robin and a formula 1 car.

The range of 120 - 300mm will frame most subjects, and f/2.8 is as fast as it gets in a zoom lens. Check out the Canon offering which is a prime f2.8 and costs £3.5K new !

This lens will take a 1.4 and a 2x teleconverter and still retain autofocus with both, that means a 600mm f/5.6 it's the cheapest way to do this Canons version will cost you over £7K (ouch).

In the 70 - 200mm range you're quite spoiled with 4 Canon versions, although the f/2.8 IS version does not perform as well as some people think it should and is slated for immenent replacement (watch the already high price increase though!), but if you want a copy of this lens you need to think second user as it's around £1400 new and even second hand it's often over your budget.

There's the Sigma 70 - 200mm f/2.8 which is a good lens although the latest 'macro' incarnation isn't held in such high esteem as its predecessor.

[EkStrodl]

[QUOTE=ImageArcade;8542]For £1k there are plenty of options. The one I’ve had most experience with (and thoroughly recommend) would be the Canon 70-200mm f4 IS L.

Excellent lens I have the non IS version ....but it produces crisp, sharp pictures so either version would be the perfect choice.

[flake]

The 70 -200mm f/4 is indeed a good lens, but f/4 isn't fast and will only allow half the light of an f/2.8 lens in addition it will not make use of the more sensitive centre focus cross point which requires a minimum f/2.8 lens. To freeze action there's no substitute for fast glass.

[cosmicma]

i'm suprised nobody has mentioned the canon 100 - 400mm f4 IS
lets face it 200mm at 30 metres aint a lot especially if your considering shooting wildlife

ok f4 isn't the fastest glass on the market but it's a perfectly respectable apeture and the IS will compensate for some of the drawbacks

at the moment i use a sigma 170 - 500 lens for wildlife and don't do too badly with it
i have one of the 70 - 200 f4 L zoom lenses and as good as it is i allways find myself wanting more magnification

the sigma will be replaced with the canon 100 - 400mm f4 L as soon as funds allow at the time i purchased the sigma it was half the cost of the canon and fitted my budget at the time
if i had had the funds at the time i wouldn't have hesitated buying the canon 100 - 400mm

[flake]

The Canon 100 - 400mm isn't an F/4 lens ! it's f/4.5 - 5.6 which means only a quarter of the light that an f/2.8 allows reaches the sensor. This lens is certainly not a choice for stop action photography, and should be up for replacement in the very near future. It also has a 1st generation IS system which only offers two stop stabilisation. In my opinion it can't hold a candle to the Sigma 120 - 300mm f/2.8, if you are considering a lens of limited aperture the Sigma 50 - 500mm was a good choice and is still available second user.

[cosmicma]

the reason i didn't buy the sigma 50 - 500mm ( bigma ) is it's heavy too heavy to use off a tripod really and another reason was it would never be used at the 50mm end of the scale it wouldn't be bought for that purpose so the 170 - 500 seemed more suitable

now then setting the IS and the speed of the glass aside what are we left with ?
we are left with image quality and the canon lenses like for like are better ( in my opinion ) so the fact the 100 - 400mm canon has 1st gen IS and is 5.6 at it's longest end the images are still pin sharp
going off my own experience ( which is all i can do ) i manage quite well with a non IS lense with a widest apeture of 6.3 at 500mm which in reality is used at around 425mm to get the best results / zoom etc.. and i know the canon produces better results at the same magnification

a friend of mine has the sigma 50 - 500 bigma and i have the sigma 170 - 500 the difference between them in image quality is zero
the diference in use is i can just about hand hold mine where the 50 - 500 is nigh on impossible to get good results hand held they really are just too heavy


the sigma lens you reccomend sigma 120 300mm f2.8 is £2000 plus in it's current model and even second hand there over budget the OP is talking about a budget of a £1000
double the budget and it's a whole new ball game f2.8 lenes can come into the equation

if you can recommend a lens better than the canon 100 - 400mm IS for a budget of 1000 quid with a 400mm focal length ( not with a converter adding more money to the budget ) then i'm all ears

[flake]

One thing you don't seem to have realised is that regardless of IS making up for aperture it will not help freeze movement, the only thing to do that is shutter speed.

The Sigma 120 - 300mm f/2.8 is fetching about £1000 second user on Ebay (when they're available) , you will need a good monopod because it is heavy (2.6Kg) a kilo heavier than the 150 -500mm version. To get it longer you do need a TC but it's still the cheapest way to a 600mm with autofocus.

Most times long lenses are too long to hand hold and get a sharp picture, so you'll need a tripod regardless of IS. 400mm needs a minimum shutter speed of 1/400th sec.

The Canon 100 - 400mm is £1200 new so you'll be buying second hand too I think you know that there are only a handful of lenses with a focal length of 400mm and most of those are well in excess of £1K, if you have to have a nice grey lens than that's fine but the Sigma 50 -500mm will give you results as good, and you have an extra 100mm too.