The photos help. To stop action in those circumstances I'd want at least 1/500 second shutter speed and in that light it means running the ISO up to 1600 or 3200 which all but guarantees noise. The newer high end DSLR's like the
Nikon D4 are made for that and will get the shots your wife wants but it costs $6k. And lenses are extra.
How bad does she want those photos?
She wants them $2k badly, but not $6k badly
Keep in mind the pro bodies don't have modes (e.g., sports) like the consumer models. Also with a FF you'll need a longer lens for the same field of view. The 70-200 2.8 is a much heavier lens, if total weight is an issue.
I'm aware of this - I would program few custom modes for her on a pro camera (and if I don't go top of the line, I thought enthusiast full sensor cameras (like Nikon D600 or D800 or Canon 5DMk3 or Canon 6D) did have "modes") )
Weight is not an issue, she is even fine with using a tripod.
And now an excellent (some people say better than Nikon and Canon in some aspects) Tamron 70-200 F2.8 IS lens are available for half the big dogs price:
Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 DI VC USD Zoom Lens for Nikon DSLR AFA009N-700
A refurbished D600 and these lens would run $3k total (still above my budget, but DW really wants to have good pictures)
You might want to set whatever cam to JPEG+RAW. That way she can have JPEGs, but you can do post-processing on a select few good images in RAW to adjust for levels and do noise reduction.
Yes - that's what I have it on.
And remember, at the same ISO and f/stop, a shorter focal range (mm) gives you more light (which equals higher shutter speed).
Are you sure about that? f/stop already have the "built in" focal length, I thought it was a ratio ratio is between the diameter of the aperture in the lens and the focal length of the lens. Easy to check - on uniformly lighted scene the exposure should not not change when you zoom in or out.
Consider the old "foot zoom" and using the fast and sharp 50mm 1.8 and either getting a little closer, or cropping.
The 85mm was exactly my attempt to use "foot zoom" (fast and sharp 85mm F1.8) for crops, but they don't look good enough according to DW.
Some brighter glass we could try with this camera would be 50mm F1.4 and 85mm F1.4
One more thought occurred to me - I could also try a manual focus 50mm F1.2, because at this focal length almost all shots would be near the far end of the focus and maybe even DW could be trained to operate the focus ring too
What are the settings and lens on those shots? The DOF (depth of field) looks like a lot more than f/2. Having a shallower DOF would be nice, especially on the shots with all that equipment in the background--having it more blurred would make it compete less for attention with your subject.
Yeah, I was surprised too about lack of nice bokeh is these shots. The first two are really F2.0 on 85mm lens other two on the F5.6 tele.
But that's probably because the subject (well, my daughter
) is comparatively far away and the distance between my daughter and the equipment is small in relation to distance between the camera and them.
Setting for earlier posted pictures (these were 25% reductions, so they could be posted here):
F2.0 ISO-1000 1/500s 85mm
F2.0 ISO-1100 1/500s 85mm
F5.3 ISO-1600 1/40s 105mm
F5.6 ISO-1600 1/50s 200mm
BTW - are you aware that unless you strip it, these setting are embedded in the JPG files? So in Windows, if you save the photo from the web and later right click on it to get Properties, these will be available on Details tab.
