Most of the time, I shoot low light action with prime lenses, but recently I tried shooting in this gym with a Nikkor AF-S 70\u2013200 mm f\/2.8 VR II. The maximum aperture is two stops smaller than what I normally use\u00a0(f\/1.4), but since I’ve tended to use ISO 800 to ISO 1600 at f\/1.4, I planned to boost sensitivity\u00a0by a stop or two and see how it all\u00a0went.<\/p>\n In the end, I was shooting at ISO 6400 using f\/2.8, and was getting exposure durations of 1\/100 s to 1\/200 s\u2014barely fast enough to catch action without heavy\u00a0motion blurring. I could have used higher sensitivities, but with my current equipment the image quality takes a definite downward turn above ISO 3200. I tried shooting both with VR on and with VR off, and the best results came when shooting relatively slow motion with VR on\u00a0(such as for less spontaneous action,\u00a0e.g.,\u00a0the side kick break above). As I practise with this lens, I expect to enjoy more success with it, but the loss of two stops in the aperture had an even bigger\u00a0practical effect on shooting than I’d anticipated.<\/p>\n On the other hand, changing focal length quickly (zooming in or out) was clearly much faster than physically repositioning\u00a0and then reframing with a prime lens. This would be invaluable for some types of shooting, but perhaps less so for the low light action shooting I tend to do. The perspective at 200 mm is also significantly different from that at 85 mm, 75 mm, or 50 mm, and it’ll be interesting to explore this in the coming months and years.<\/p>\n Overall, though, even based on a single event’s worth of shooting, it’s clear that for a new martial art photographer or someone on a limited budget, a low to mid-level consumer DSLR body (EF-S bodies from\u00a0Canon, or DX bodies from\u00a0Nikon) with a 50 mm f\/1.8 prime lens (effectively being\u00a0a short telephoto lens in this context) would\u00a0still be the kit with the best value for money. This would be well\u00a0under the $1,000 mark, yet be able to serve well into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s a particular\u00a0school gymnasium in Perth where\u00a0the lighting is very\u00a0challenging for action photography. It’s possibly the worst lit gym in the entire city. At night, the fluorescent lights\u00a0are dim (and have been for years), cast different shades of sickly green-tinted light in different parts of the hall, and also differ in brightness\u00a0from one area to… Continue reading Possibly the worst lit gymnasium in Perth<\/span> ![\"Rhee](\"https:\/\/ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/YWO_ND2_40542s.jpg\")
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