100-400L

I have a love/dislike relationship with this lens. I shot a Euro NFL game in stadium the other day. Light was evening stadium lighting. It was the first time I shot under those conditions. It was no fun really. I find the 1600 ISO setting on my D10 too noisy for pretty shots (especially under bad lighting). It is usable and you can tweek them after the fact.. but really, the fun with the D10 for me begins when you can keep it under 400 ISO. Other issue with shooting football under lighting coming from above is that the faces of the player under the helmets are dark and not very interesting. Next time I may go shorter focal length and flash them (assuming I get lucky and the action comes my way). Tough sport to shoot!

So, after the event I was a bit down on the lens/camera setup and down in my sports photography. This weekend I shot an Olympic qualifier track and field event for a client (here in Holland). The day was slightly overcast with occasional sun. PREFECT! I got a lot of decent shots, mostly shooting 200 ISO. In these conditions this lens is a fantastic piece of gear.

Shots best place to see the shots is on my news page (haven't figured out how to post photos):

http://www.THEBIGPICTU​RE.ws/news.html

I am curious to hear how the MKII performs at 1600 ISO with the 100-400L. Anyone, used the combo in tricky lighting yet? At some point in the future, I will need to buy something to get the crappy stadium lighting shots. My choice is either to go with a faster telephoto or an new D1 (or both...!).

Great forum!

ps.. For those who check out the shots.. Yes, the shot of the blond bomb shell athlete running with the perfectly blurred background has been slightly enhanced with a well placed motion blur..! I typically shoot RAW and enhance the colors and sharpness in Photoshop.

I shot a baseball game as a spectator with the 100-400L recently and was able to shoot at ISO 800 under domed stadium lighting. Got some awesome shots as well. Only thing I couldn't do was shoot above 1/180 or 1/250, which wasn't a problem except when there was very fast action or when I wanted to get stop-motion shots of someone swinging the bat. Not displeased overall given that it wasn't a monster f/2.8 prime.

Here's a shot of the Yankee's Mike Mussina on the mound, with Jason Giambi at first waiting for the pickoff. EOS-10D, 100-400L, ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/250.

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Nice shot. Yeah, 800 is still ok when light permits. I have shot with it. But still.. over 400 things a lot get less pretty with the 100-400L. I have shot a dance performance at 800/1600. I chose to shoot it with my fixed 50mm 1.4. The lighting with good on the dancers and very dark all around them, so spot metering gave me some good exposure. The spot lighting was still kind of patchy so not ideal. The dancers in the foreground came out nice and sharp and not to noisy. I had to blur the dark backgrounds a bit in PS as they had to much noise for my taste. The shot is also up on my news page. So, my hunch is that with a good prime 400 or so, the 800/1600 ISO setting would be very usable on the 10D.

Cheers from sunny Holland.


http://www.THEBIGPICTU​RE.ws/