Nikon SLR Cameras

Best valued Nikon lens for sports photography?

austin stepp
austin stepp

I'm currently in high school and I'm 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 don't care if its Tamron or Sigma or some other brand as long as its a good lens. My budget is under $900.

fhotoace
fhotoace

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

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/...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.

Picture Taker
Picture Taker

I like the Nikon 28-300 for outdoor sports and motorsports. You probably won't be happy with it indoors, though, although the high ISO performance of the D7000 will go a long way to making it acceptable. Most sports photos are not judged to the same standard as fine art, so you might make out okay. The lens costs under $1, 000, I'm pretty sure.

The holy grail for indoor sports would probably be one of the f/2.8 lenses (17-55, 24-70, or 70-200), but that will blow your budget through the roof. Nikon has introduced a new line of moderately priced f/4.0 lenses to take advantage of the good high ISO performance of the newer cameras, but I really don't know how well they perform or what they cost. It may be worth looking into, though.

Here are entirely too many samples from the 28-300 lens to look at, so just look over the thumbnails to see what you can expect. The only problem I have is if I'm trying to do podium shots while standing in front of the crowd. For that, I go ahead and switch to the 17-55.

Uns.gang
Uns.gang

I Think 85mm f/1.8 is the best lens for Sports photography it cost approximately 400 Dollers

Farooq
Farooq

I recommend a 70-200mm this is a zoom lens and it fits well for D7000 sports zone. I recommend you seeing this post for excellent sports photography, there are so many brilliant examples.
http://www.antsmagazine.com/photography-2/sports-photography-gallery/