Is the Nikon 70-300mm VR lens good for Sports photography?

IS the Nikon 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 VR good for sports. I know 4.5-5.6 is not very good, and your not letting a lot of light but money is an issue, I would love to get a Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II but I don't have that kind of money. I'm also doing this as a hobby, nothing professional. (mostly indoor photography)

Indoor sports? Hmm. Could be a bit tricky. That lens is absolutely fine for outdoor sports in decent light (I've used it). Indoors, you're almost certainly going to need a higher ISO (by a couple of stops or more) to make it work, so it will also depend on the camera you're using. If it's something like a D3 or better (even a D700 would work) then you can crank the ISO up to 6400 without any worries and that should let you get the shutter speed necessary. If it's a more entry-level or intermediate camera, you might run into issues.

With sports, you pretty much have to get the shutter speed high enough unless you're deliberately going for blur effects, so most people will crank up the ISO as high as the camera will let them, accept the noise as a necessary evil, then process it out later.

So: for outdoor sports, no problem at all. For indoor, depends on your camera and your tolerance for noise.

For indoor sports photography the 70-300 f4.5-5.6 is going to be almost completely useless if you're trying to freeze the action.
In a lot of gyms, even f2.8 will require an ISO of 6400+ if you want to avoid motion blur. I've only shot in Division 1 college facilities so I would imagine that if you're shooting in a high school gym, it gets even worse. Even a $6500 D4s will struggle in those conditions at f5.6.

I'd recommend trying something like an 85mm f1.8 if you're on a tight budget.

When shooting in full sun, the Nikkor AF-S 70-300 mm is the perfect lens for shooting field sports.

Once you go indoors, you need a couple of good zoom lenses like the 24-70 mm f/2.8 and 70-200 mm f/2.8. Even then you will be shooting at ISO 3200 in able to shoot at 1/500th second or faster.

Shooting sports indoors ups the anti a whole bunch.

I shoot basketball using a 24-70 mm f/2.8 when the action is at my end of the court and a 300 mm f/2.8 when the play is cross court.

Here is a sample of a shot, using a 300 mm f/2.8, ISO 3200 @ 1/500th second.

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As you can see, a 70-300 mm lens wide open at f/5.6 is two stops too slow. You would have to shoot wide open at 1/125th second and hand held, you would not only get blur of the athletes extremities, but from camera movement during the exposure.

Your hobby needs to change to shooting outdoors, unless you are willing to pay for a fast zoom lens.

While I can get great shots using the 300 mm f/2.8 prime, I'm limited to its usage as the game moves towards where I'm sitting. At that point I have to switch cameras and use the one with the 24-70 mm f/2.8 on it.

Shooting sports with a prime lens indoors will be a challenge, since most sporting venues, restrict the movement of the media, photographers or videographers. When using a fixed focal length of an 85 mm or even a 24 mm lens, your composition options are few.

I'm with Christopher on this one, I actually use a 90mm F2.5 for sporting events and it does the job for me… I don't work indoors though and the light is always good.

The 70-300 for me is too long and not fast enough for using indoors… If I needed the reach of a 300mm lens i'd invest in a fixed lens with a decent aperture… I carry a 60-300mm lens and very rarely use it… It does come in handy… It's just not something that I have a need for very often.

I use Nikon and Pentax cameras because I can throw a manual focus lens on their cameras and get great shots… This will depend on what Nikon model you have… Manual focus lenses are great and can be picked up inexpensively on the used market, if you fancy focussing manually… It isn't the easiest thing to try, it's like anything else, practice makes perfect… And I think it's a lot of fun.

I agree that an f/4.5-5.6 is really too slow for indoor sports. I also agree that the 70-200mm f/2.8 is insanely expensive.

So here is an alternative to consider: The Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/4G zoom. At B&H - http://www.bhphotovideo.com/...ovideo.com - new is $1,369.95 and used is $1,229.95. Certainly not cheap but $1,030.00 less than the f/2.8 version.

Yes, f/4 is one whole stop slower than f/2.8 so under the conditions David shot at f/2.8 at 1/500 sec. At ISO 3200, at f/4 your shutter speed would be 1/250 sec. At ISO 3200.