(as a bad workman does)
I attempted to take some shots at the trampoline competition this weekend, and gave up pretty rapidly – there’s working to get the most from tough conditions, but there’s also lacking the right tools for the job. The light in the sports hall is atrocious (warmer than candle-light colour temperature, I’d guess 3500-4000K) and the nature of the sport precludes strobes or getting close to the beds. To freeze motion in a somersault you’d need a shutter of something like 1/100 or 1/150, but positioning implies at least 120mm of zoom – and then you want a big aperture due to the low overall lighting level. So big, fast, glass, which is expensive.
I chatted to a friendly person from Durham who was also shooting, she possessed a stable-ized Canon 70-300mm on an EOS20, which I’d figured would be sufficient to get a decent image, but was still struggling with the light. I think the Sigma 50-150mm, which is a fixed f2.8 might get a decent shot if I could crank the ISO high enough, but on my current body that means ISO800 at the most.
