Canon 75-300 IS- will it work ok indoors?

Both my Father and I just got D Rebels and were looking for a good all around zoom. He wants to be able to shoot indoors (say a childs play or something that has some lighting to it) and I would like to be able to get @ least 300 for wildlife stuff. Would the IS allow for the indoor shots to work. We really don't want to spend over a grand for lenses YET. =) so @ $500 bucks this lens sounded good. Any advice? Thanks!

The IS will help eliminate blur from camera shake, but this lens is slow, so you would have to use it with a flash to get decent indoor candids of children playing. The IS does not help eliminate blur from your subject moving at slow shutterspeeds, it's only to help eliminate blur due to the photographer not being able to keep the camera steady. For me, 75mm is too long for taking candids of my kids "around the house" ... if you have a tight budget the Tamron 28-75 (or Sigma) is fast and would work well for indoor candids. I have the Canon 24-70 f2.8L which has been superb, but it is a bit expensive and some don't like the weight (not an issue for me).

Also, if you can possibly afford it, the Canon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS has better image quality than the 75-300, and is about the same weight but an inch and a half shorter. Still a bit long to me for an all around lens for taking indoor candids and again is too slow to use indoors without a flash.

I hope this helps.

Bob

The limitation with IS is it does nothing to prevent blur on moving subjects.

Sure, you're indoors, shutter speed is down to 1/30th and IS will let you get a sharp photo. Thing is, if the subject is a rapidly moving child 1/30th will not do the job no matter what lens its mounted on.

Yes, it will work indoors with flash as already stated. I also echo the lens being too long, 75mm indoors is okay if you want tight shots but a shorter lens will work better. I have the 75-300 IS and forced myself to use it exclusively for a week. I took many indoor shot of my kids but had to use flash to get anything I could use. I found myself backing up and running out of room to get the shot that I wanted. The lens hunted a lot and once the lens starts hunting it takes a while for it to recover, I lost many shots that way. It is not like the newer IS lenses and is only worth a two stop improvement. I have not used it since for indoor use.

The next lens I got was the very inexpensive 50mm 1.8mm. This lens is ideal for indoor use you can get alot more of the scene in the shot and if I wanted a tighter shot I just took a few steps closer. I can use this lens without flash and used it alot! It's cheap enough to buy it and try it out, good luck.

One more thing, I recently purchased the 28-135mm IS. It provids three stop hand holding improvement and is a far better lens than the 75-300mm IS. This is what I know use to do exactly what you want to use it for. Indoor pics of the kids.

Have fun!

-Clos

Edit (must have been sleepy):

IS reduces the impact of camera shake due to having unsteady hands. In other words it allows you to use a slower shutterspeed than what you would normally require to capture the same still image. Each f-stop is equivalent to halving or doubling the amount of light (halving/doubling the shutterspeed to keep the exposure the same). Three stops would mean that you could shoot at one eigth the shutterspeed that you could without IS. However, tests by Canon and others indicate that you can handhold with IS at 1/4 (not 1/ 8 of the minimum shutterspeed you could shoot handheld with without causing camera shake without IS ... equivalent to two stops. However, this is just for eliminating the impact of camera shake ... if your subject is moving you still need a high enough shutterspeed to eliminate motion blur.

If you use a tripod then IS isn't useful or required, and it also isn't typically required for sports photography where shutterspeeds are usually quite high. Also, IS is more important when taking pictures at longer focal lengths where camera shake would be more noticeable.

Bob

I'm confused how you are confused. The ability to steady your unsteady hands is exactly why it is said to give a 2 or 3 stop advantage to handholding. If you normally find 1/250 is your limit for a given focal length, well now you can take a steady shot at 1/60 or even 1/30.

Also, the IS on some of more expensive lenses has a tripod mode where it can remain on and help damp any movement encountered in the tripod from user handling, wind, etc.

I just edited my post before I noticed yours

(not confused really ... just tired)

I use the 75-300 IS indoors all the time for our kids school functions. While I don't think it's the best lens choice the price makes it worth using. Check out some of the shots in my Photobucket galleries (link in sig below). I don't think I've ever taken a shot with this lens using the flash either. My trick is to use a tripod or monopod when I can't take hand held shots.

Jon.

Bob_A wrote:
I just edited my post before I noticed yours

(not confused really ... just tired)

Oops.

And of course the edited version makes the big point with IS. Being able to shot at 1/8 just means you'll end up with more subjects where the subject is blurred due to its own motion.

I looked at your link. In regards tothe dublin concert, love your shots, please tell me the stage was well lit! Otherwise I am jealous of your technique and must be doing something wrong.

steibeldj wrote:
I looked at your link. In regards to the dublin concert, love your shots, please tell me the stage was well lit! Otherwise I am jealous of your technique and must be doing something wrong.

Thanks! But the lighting was not very good at all, the theatre was very dark. I had to use a tripod for all those shots. The lights were changing from red to orange to blue to green and then spot lights were used when people/things were being moved around. For whatever reason I couldn't get a good shot when the blue lights were on. All the other colors were fine. I also had the IS turned off while the camera was on the tripod. My tripod is a Slik 700DX which is rock solid. No MLU was used but I did take each shot with the IR remote.

Jon.