Canon 100-300mm vs 70-300 IS USM

[kenthilburn]

Does anyone know what would be the slowest I could shoot at a night football game with good stadium lights shooting in the 300mm range? I'm trying to decide on a zoom lens. It's between a Canon 100-300 without the IS and the 70-300 with the IS. I know it's roughly 1/300 to keep it steady in daylight without IS, but can I shoot that fast with stadium lights? I guess I'm wondering if the IS would let me get down enough to get good pictures in the low light conditions. The stadium lights are pretty bright though. It's a brand new stadium.

[djwixx]

With stadium lights you'll be struggling, obviously depending on how bright the lighting is and what exposure mode you're using and the light on the subject you're exposing at the time. You'll have to rely on the ISO to give you the shutter speed. I was trying something similar with a 85mm lens at F1.8 and had to use ISO800 to get anything vaguely useful, which ranged from 1/100th to 1/300th. At it's widest and longest I think the lenses you're looking at will be F5.6 so depending on the ISO you might still be lucky to get 1/30th. IS will make 1/30th usable for still subjects at 300mm, but with moving subjects it'll be hit and miss and you may just need to be in continuous focus and rely on taking dozens of shots and hope some come out.

If IS is an option take it. At 300mm hand held you'll throw 80% of your shots in reasonable light. With IS you'll keep 80%, so it is worth money.

[kenthilburn]

Wow. I knew it would tough, but not that tough. Thanks for the help. I was leaning toward the IS anyway.

[dougj]

Artificial light is deceiving - I agree with Dave, even though this is a new stadium with bright lights I think it will be a struggle with either of lenses to capture useful action shots at night. I think you'll need at least an f/2.8 lens, I suggest you borrow or rent a lens for a night and do some test shooting.

[djwixx]

Wow. I knew it would tough, but not that tough. Thanks for the help. I was leaning toward the IS anyway.

The full F-stop table is,
F1.0, F1.4, F2.0, F2.8, F4.0, F5.6, F8, F11, F16, F22, F32
Each halving or doubling of aperture has an inverse affect on shutter speed, as does ISO

As an example if you were getting a shutter speed of 1/500th at ISO200 at F5.6, going to F8 would effectively halve the shutter speed to 1/250th, f11 would become 1/125th and so on, so to get 1/500th at F8 back you would double the ISO to ISO400, or F11 at ISO800 and so on. The poorer the light is the more you need to consider a fast lens and/or high ISO hence Dougj suggesting a minimum of F2.8 and for sports I would assume most would recommend a 70-200 F2.8 and a fat pocket, assuming you can get close enough to the action!!! With IS you're potentially adding scope to achieve an extra 3-4 stops, so what you could manage at F5.6 without IS you could potentially get away with the same shutter speed at F16, or what you could manage at ISO800 without IS you could potentially get away with ISO100 with IS etc. Remember, IS improves the results hand held and at slower shutter speeds but doesn't mean you'll get the shutter speeds you need for some situations. You may get a crisp results at 1/30th but if the subject needs to to be stopped at 1/300th for a clear shot you'll be back to needing a fast lens or high ISO to get the shutter speed.

Below is an attempt at some rodeo shots. It was reasonably bright (some moving cloud) but I still had to use ISO to get the shutter speed to stop some of the action. With the benefit of hindsight maybe ISO800 would have been better or at IS0800 I would have had the scope to use F8 or F11.
http://www.pbase.com/djwixx/8seconds

[kenthilburn]

Thanks everyone. It looks like if I'm going to do it, I better do it in sept while there is still some light in the sky.