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Lynn, you can get a Sigma 20mm and 24mm f/1.8 for about $550.00, and $630.00, respectively. Maybe not the best lenses in that category but definitely serviceable.
Anton, I stand by my reasoning. The lighting for these events is bright for viewing with the naked eye, but not great for photographic purposes. One would want as fast a shutter speed as possible for freezing the action, not for addressing camera shake. At 20-24mm one could hand hold at a fairly slow shutter speed, but subject blur would be a problem. A faster shutter speed will always freeze the action better than a slower one.
It has been my experience in a fair number of sports arenas that even at ISO 1600, f/2.8 rarely gave a fast enough shutter to freeze the action of whatever sport was being contested.
Last edited by mrchile; 07-13-2011 at 02:58 PM.
There are two pips in a beaut,
four beauts in a lulu,
eight lulus in doozy,
and sixteen doozies in a humdinger.
Nobody knows how many humdingers are in a lollapalooza.
George Carlin
This quote is from More Joy of Photography by the editors at Eastman Kodak (Addison-Wesley, 1981, p. 40): "Another important safeguard is to use a shutter speed fast enough to negate the effects of unavoidable body movement. Here's a handy formula for determining the slowest shutter speed it's safe to use: place the number 1 over the focal length of the lens, expressed in millimetres, and consider the fraction as a shutter speed ... With a 50 mm lens, 1/50 second would be the slowest shutter speed at which you could reasonably expect to avoid image degradation from camera movement." Using EV 7, the ambient light in my office in late afternoon, that's 1/60 second at f/2.8 at an EI of 100, doable with a 28 mm or shorter lens. At EV 11, your example, that translates to 1/250 sec. at f/2.8 at an EI of 400. And if you bump the EI to 800, you get an exposure of 1/500 sec. at f/2.8. That's how sensor speed affects exposure. All these EVs assume identical lighting conditions. With a 28 mm lens, you are at stop action by the time you get to a shutter speed of 1/60 sec, but are much safer in terms of stopping action when you get to 1/125 second. There are other factors, as well. They include, but are not limited to the angle of the motion relative to the lens axis. If the action is coming straight at the camera, a slower shutter speed than you seem to believe necessary will stop the action. On the other hand, any action coming at an angle to the lens axis will require much faster shutter speeds to stop it. I doubt that kkarl00's T2i is incapable of providing the necessary sensitivity that he needs to shoot his fights, even to stop the action at f/8, with an f/2.8 lens mounted on his camera.Originally Posted by mrchile
Anton
Where everything is considered excellent mediocrity is the standard.
I think you are confused Anton. Try going to a martial arts competition and shoot it at 1/60sec. Lets see how well that freezes the action. I don't care what the EV is, how much light, or what lens you use. Without flash, at 1/60 sec, you are going to get a lot of blurry pics, unless you take them when the contestants are standing relatively still.
There are two pips in a beaut,
four beauts in a lulu,
eight lulus in doozy,
and sixteen doozies in a humdinger.
Nobody knows how many humdingers are in a lollapalooza.
George Carlin
I'm not confused. I've shot rural rodeos outdoors at night under extremely low light conditions with a long slow lens and still gotten acceptable images using Variopan and other films made for pushing. The trick is to use a high EI to get the shutter speed fast enough to stop the action, if that's what you want. kkarl00's camera will give him up to EI 6400 sensitivity. If you object to the noise that he will get by doing that, I say that the object is to get the image, and if a $225 lens can do it then use that one in conjunction with a high EI. You don't need an expensive, fast lens in order to do that. You need to know how to use your camera. Read my response to you again to see that that is built in to my technique.
And since the subject is an action sport, showing the action should be part of the agenda. Sports don't take form as a series of cartoon frames. Furthermore, the image magnification at the sensor plane is what determines whether motion is apparent. If you shoot the same scene of a moving subject from the same place with matched, tripod-mounted cameras but different focal length lenses, the images produced with the longer focal length will show more apparent movement than those done with the shorter focal length. That's a physical property of the medium.
Anton
Where everything is considered excellent mediocrity is the standard.
We all shoot from our own experience. And all I'm saying is that the roughly one stop difference from F/2.8 to f/1.8 CAN make a difference. If you can get away without it, great, but I prefer to have that one stop difference in my favor. That's all I have to say about that.
There are two pips in a beaut,
four beauts in a lulu,
eight lulus in doozy,
and sixteen doozies in a humdinger.
Nobody knows how many humdingers are in a lollapalooza.
George Carlin
This is getting silly, john. First off, I do agree with your premise that adding 1.5 stops of light gathering capacity can be beneficial. Only a fool would disagree with you on that point. Where I disagree with you is that you advised a photographer, assumed by me to be an amateur, to buy a rather expensive lens even after he has expressed doubt about spending $500 on such a lens.
When kkarl00 asks "Do you think a 28mm 1.8 lens will help with that or should I not bother to spend the extra $500 on a new lens.?" I read that he is an amateur who doesn't know how to use the features of his camera. I answered him as another amateur who has had to make choices based solely on what I could afford and then learn how to get the most out of the purchase. Your answer to him would be appropriate if he were a professional photographer who can write off the cost of a new lens as a business expense and further offset the expense with sales of images created with it. But a real professional should not be asking such a question in the first place. He should know what equipment he needs and should be purchasing it without having to ask for the advice of anyone, least of all the amateurs who tend to populate this website.
We should not be advocating the purchase of any equipment to him because we do not know enough important information about him and his level of photographic knowledge. First, as I mentioned, is whether or not he is a pro. We also do not know what the ambient light levels actually are. Has he measured the light in the ring? Does he even know how to do it? If he is using his in-camera meter for autoexposure during the match, it can and will be fooled by any areas that are dark because there is little or no illumination on them (read: the stands in the background). If that's what he's doing, it's no wonder that he thinks the lighting is horrible. It's giving too much weight to the dark areas. The only light that is important is the light that falls on the contestants, the light that provides the illumination for proper exposure of them. Once he knows that information, does he know how to set his exposure manually? and does he understand the relationship between EI and EV? It's entirely possible that under the conditions he's shooting, his exposure will be 1/250 sec. at f/5.6 (EV13) at EI 400 or EI 800. That will stop action with a 100 mm lens, and with his 50 mm f/1.8 lens, he gains a lot in terms of DOF; however, to be fair, it's also possible that the lighting above the ring/cage is so low that it requires an exposure of 1/15 sec. at f/1 at an EI of 6400. And one last item: does he know how to focus his camera manually, prefocussing at the distance he anticipates the action to take place? That one technique will eliminate the hunting that may also be taking place because of the mixed ambient or just plain low light levels. Unless we know that information, at a minimum, we can not give good advice about what lens(es) will be best for his kit.
Anton
Where everything is considered excellent mediocrity is the standard.
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