60d lens

[jerapaz]

I'm looking to purchase a lens to shoot indoors sports (basketball) on my 60d. Any recommendations? budget is about $600.

[rpcrowe]

It all depends on where you are planning to shoot from. From the sidelines, probably the Canon 85mm f/1.8 or 100mm f/2 lenses would be about the best you can get for the price you expect to pay. Closer or under the basket might requite a wider fast lens like the 30mm f/1.4 Sigma...

[William W]

Ditto Richard's response.

Add that in between the shooting distances he mentioned - the 50/1.4 or 50/1.8 would be useful.
As for Canon Lenses - The 35/2 comes into contention if you are shooting at close range; so does the 28/1.8

Also - can you move about?
Also - what lenses do you have now?

WW

[koolkat]

I just picked up the Canon 50mm F1.4 for low light / indoors shooting. So far the shots are really sharp and AF is spot on. Shooting at F1.4 then moving down to 1.8..2.0 etc is amazing to play with as the background blur is fun to play with. Nice lens and B&H just had a one day sale for $299.00USD. The manual override on the autofocus is smooth, typical Canon quality.

[rpcrowe]

Congratulations... You have a very nice lens... Don't be afraid of boosting the ISO high enough to get a shutter speed which will stop action...

There is a technique which was often used before we had exceptionally fast lenses and cameras with gazillion ISO capability...

Shooting at the peak of action can help when shooting in a gym with less than great lighting. Basically this means when a basketball player jumps for the basket, there is often a momentary pause between when he is going up and before he starts coming down. Shooting at this instant can allow sharper images when using a slower shutter speed...

Additionally, a player running towards the camera can be stopped with a slower shutter speed than a player runing across the camera. Finally, there are lots of times when players stop momentarily such as when a player is trying to fake past a defender. Selecting your shots will do a lot for acquiring good imagery...

The first shot in this tutorial is an example of shooting at the peak of action...

http://www.pixiq.com/article/tips-fo...ing-basketball

[jerapaz]

I ended up getting 135 f2l and 55mm 1.8. Together it was almost double my budget but I couldn't resist. We only live once!