I currently shoot my kids U9s rugby with a Nikon Z6 and 70-200 2.8 with an FTZ adapter. But as the pitches are bigger now than when they played tag only I’m finding the 200mm reach limiting and I end up doing a lot of cropping. I’m not printing these or publishing them anywhere, but it does consume a lot of time in post processing.

So I’m considering some long lenses, almost certainly second hand.

I obviously rely on decent autofocus speed as the kids are pretty quick. I’m less worried about edge sharpness as it’s centre sharpness that matters most and vignetting I consider a solved problem using PhotoLab.

I’ve had my eye on either:

  • Sigma 150-600 DG OS HSM SPORT
  • Nikon 200-500

The Sigma is more expensive, but i don’t mind if its woth the extra. I don’t know much about Tamron or others.

What would you recommend or have experience with shooting outdoor field sports?

  • @IMALlama@lemmy.world
    1•5 days ago

    Another Sony shooter here. I have a few Sigma primes and optically they’re pretty good. I imagine their zooms are too, but I don’t have any.

    For youth sports, I use Tamron’s 150-500 on e-mount. It looks like it’s available on z-mount too. It focuses very quickly and accurately, is sharp end to end, and has really nice rendering. It’s also a bit smaller/lighter than the Sigma. Yeah, you loose 100mm, but 500 vs 600 isn’t that drastic.

    So far I’ve been through two T-ball seasons, one baseball season, and one soccer season with it. I’ve never found myself wanting for more. On the biggest baseball field our kids have been to, the fences put me either 100 or 175 feet (30-50 meters) from home base at the end of the fence. With 6-7 year old kids I don’t need 500mm on the shorter side for a full body + bat shot.

    Downsides:

    • 150mm is pretty long, so my phone usually comes out of my pocket for post game stuff. I try to stick to a single lens bag
    • On Sony, all third party lenses tend to not hold focus well when zooming. This is more annoyance than anything