Film to Digtal

At long last I am going to make the leap from using film to digital and I need some advice.

My main photograpic interest is cricket.

I would be grate ful for any advice on what type of camera and lense I should go for.

The Canon 30D would be a good camera for any type of sports shooting. I'm not sure how close you can get at your particular venues, but a lens with an f/2.8 maximum aperture would probably be a good choice. Both Sigma and Canon make lenses in the 70-200 focal lengths, though you might consider them a bit pricey. Canon also makes a 200mm fixed focal length lens that's economically priced with great image quality. I'd also consider a 1.4x teleconverter to extend the lens a bit. Not sure what your budget is, but this might be a good place to start.

Thanks for your advice. My rough budget is about £700

£700 is going to be really, really tough, as cricket really needs long lenses, and £700 won't leave you that much change from a 350D body and a CompactFlash card.


The most recent cricket shots I saw on here used an EF 400mm f/2.8L IS lens, which is around £5300 (it's the second most expensive EF mount lens after the EF 600mm f/4L IS - I'm ignoring the EF 1200mm f/5.6L as that's a very rare lens - supposedly less than 20 in the world - to special order only). You need to team that with a fairly decent tripod and head (often something like Gitzo 3 series carbon fibre, full Wimberley and some brand of Arca Swiss plate for the tripod ring on the lens).

That's not saying that you need the 400mm f/2.8 lens to get anything usable with cricket, but it shows how intelligent we have to be with the budget. Even shorter f/2.8 primes, like the EF 200mm f/2.8L II that liza mentioned, are out of budget (that lens is around £530 in the UK). The EF 300mm f/4L IS may do a fair job for cricket on a 1.6x body in reasonable light, but that's £900. I've not got the sports experience of liza or gmen.

Unfortunately you've chosen one of the toughest sports on equipment, because of the distance you tend to be away from the wicket.


What sort of kit are you using with film? That may give us an idea what you're really after. If you have lenses you're using with an existing Canon EOS body, they'll work with an EOS Digital body if they're Canon, and may work with a digital SLR if they're EF mount from a third party.

Canon FD mount (manual focus) lenses can be used, but they need an adaptor which is rare and pricey when it does become available used - it's easier to use many non-Canon manual focus lenses.

David

I tend not to take "out in the middle" shots but usually when the players are warming up or fielding out on the boundary. I tend to get my best shots this way.

I tend to take nearly all my shots of the players warming up or when they are fielding on the boundary. I don't think I've taken more than 50 "middle" shots. I prefer the close up ones and this is what most of my collection is (standing at over 2000 possibly more)

What film camera and lenses do you have? Canon EF lenses will fit on a Canon digital camera, so if you have any of those you should try them out before buying any new lenses. You may find that you need to get a super wide angle lens do to the crop factor in most DSLRs.

Cricket requires veeeerrry long lenses for shots during play, and even if your taking shots of people warming up you still will probably require quite a long lens.

However, we need to know what you currently have. If you currently use AF lenses from a different manuafacturer (Nikon etc) then I'd recommend you go with them. If you currently have Canon lenses, what are they?

My lense is a 70-300mm 1:4 - 5.6 APO macro by sigma and my camera is a Minolta 300si.

Both these have served me well at UK and overseas matches but the cost of film is preventing me taking as many photos as I'd like to hence the reason I want to move to digital asap

Sony has announced the A100 DSLR that will use the Minolta lens mount. This sounds like it will be an advance 10 mp camera with a 1.5x crop factor that will have image stabilization built into the body. The crop factor means you 70-300 lens will compose pictures as if it were a 105-450 mm lens.

Since you only have one lens, it may not be worth waiting to see what the Sony is like and how much it costs. If you really like your lens, it might be worth keeping it and having a look at the Sony A100 when it is available. It probably comes with an 18-70 kit lens (see attached link), so you would end up with a two lens kit giving complete coverage from 18 mm to 300 mm.

http://www.dpreview.co​m/articles/sonydslra10​0/

At this point no one know how successful Sony will be in the DSLR market, but given the strength of the company there is a good chance they will be competitive with Canon and NIkon.

£700 would cover a good, used 20D for a start. Find a friend that you can borrow lenses from?

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