IS not reccomended for sports?

So i've been looking to purchase a 300 2.8 or even a 4002.8 for shooting sports. So should i bother with having the IS versions or not, been getting responses on both sides. But what do you think?

tennfan1125 wrote in post #16308854
So i've been looking to purchase a 300 2.8 or even a 4002.8 for shooting sports. So should i bother with having the IS versions or not, been getting responses on both sides. But what do you think?

If you want to buy a non IS version, it will be an old used one, they only sell them new with IS, and have done for quite some time. I also believe that Canon has stopped servicing the non IS models now as they are so old and parts are unavailable.

Personally, I would prefer the IS anyway (I have the 300 f/2.8L IS) as you can always have it and not use it, but you can't use it if you don't have it. "shooting sports" covers a huge range of potential uses, I use IS a lot for sport as I mainly do motorsports and want a lot of background blur, so I am shooting at slooow shutter speeds (I have been as low as 1/30th handheld with the 300, and 1/60th with the 300 and a 2x TC bringing it up to 600mm) so IS in panning mode makes the difference between getting the shot and getting a blurry mess.

With field sports, if you are using a high shutter speed to freeze motion then you don't NEED the IS to stabilise the image, but it still stabilises the image in the viewfinder, making it easier to keep your focus point in exactly the right spot (on a players face for example) at all times. Some people believe that using IS at high shutter speeds degrades the image, but I have never noticed this and at around 1/500th under stadium lights, you can still get some slight camera shake which it can help with (particularly if using a crop body).

If you are only ever going to use fast shutter speeds and are very good at tracking the subject and keeping the focus point spot on target, then you could happily live without IS, and many people do, even turning it off if they have it. If you envisage shooting other subjects, or wanting to do some slower shutter speed shots for artistic blur (which can be effective with second curtain flash to still freeze a sharp subject, for example) then IS could be useful, or even essential, at times.

The only real reason in my opinion is to save money. That's it.

In my experience the IS is good to have for all focal lengths above 300mm. Sometimes I shoot sports in low light and I end up shooting with slow-ish shutter speed to reduce the ISO. When the object then is far away, even a 1-2 mm camera movement while pressing the shutter will result in a massive blur. I.e I often shoot soccer@400mm with IS. I often have to focus on people on the other half and even at 1/800sec I have problems getting sharp images without IS.

Som my opinion and experience is that IS is not necessary up to 200-300mm for sports (Except if you want to get great panning-shots) but at 300 and above IS is extremely valuable.

It's not that it's not recommended but it's simply not needed, at least most of times (if you go for some long exposures and more art stuff it can be helpful). But personally I have it switched off 99.9% of time.
Thing is, current lenses (300/2.8, 400/2.8, 500/4...) all have IS and you can't get it without IS. These lenses without IS are 10 years old or so, and as most of them are not lenses some hobby shooters would have (at least not normally), this means these lenses saw whole lot of abuse through their lifetime, and personally I wouldn't be too keen of getting such used lens.

If you decided to sell the lens down the road,it will be much easier selling one with IS.

If you get the new supertelephotos, I've found IS mode 3 (engage IS only when shutter is open rather than when AE/AF is engaged) is useful for sports since you get the benefits of IS without a jerky VF.

On my Sigma OS I find that it sometimes take a bit longer to lock on when OS is engaged. Framing is easier when on, but I end up with more keepers without it.

Just to be clear, IS isn't related to sports, it's more related to long focal lengths and YOUR body movement, the only benefit you can use for sports is to be able to keep the camera steady while chasing your subject.