EOS R10 Lens suggestion for sports

[Ammarie23]

Hi! I have a cannon R10. I’d still consider my self a beginner but want to capture better shots of my son and his sports. He plays soccer, baseball and basketball. So I’d need something that can do indoor and outdoor. I also capture a lot of school scenes for their yearbook and just memories. I’d love to know what lense I should be looking at. I’m open to buying used or new. I really am not familiar with the pricing. I’d also love to have a lense for shooting indoor/ outdoor family sessions (just my own currently). What would you suggest for this too? Thank you for any and all suggestions! 

[Waddizzle]

Welcome to the Community.

First and foremost, do you have a budget?

Capturing action photos indoors is very different from capturing action photos outdoors. While the exposure aperture settings can be similar, the focal length of the lenses are often not.

You’re will most likely be looking for two different lenses. I would prioritize indoor shooting if your budget doesn’t allow for two lenses. 

You can figure on each lens costing $500 - $2000 USD. The outdoor lenses will fall more towards the high end of that price range.  

[Tronhard]

Hi and welcome to the forum: 🙂

You are looking at a wide range of genres and situations here, and those really demand different lenses.
As my wise colleague Bill (@Widdizzle) noted, you can't do it all with the one lens, even for just indoor vs. outdoor sports. 

Definitely, we need to know a budget, and also what you will produce - the demands for social media and digital display are different for those for decent-size prints. 

So, looking at your list of intended subjects I will collect them according to lens type:
For basketball and portraits:  a 70-200 f/2.8 or f/4 would help for the wide aperture in dim light
For baseball and soccer:  something in the range of 100-400 or longer (100-500) would be best which you get depends on budget and the longer the lens the slower it is, and often the more it costs - and the heavier it is.
For school scenes, general family and portraiture: a RF 24-105 lens should do the trick - there are several variants depending on budget 

You need to be careful buying used.  If doing so, source from a vendor that is reputable, rates their gear, and provides a warranty.   There are two suggestions I would make there:|

Canon Refurbished Lenses: Canon Refurbished & Used Camera Lenses | Canon U.S.A, Inc. These may be new but over-stock, new but open box, demo or display models, but 'good as new' and come with a Canon warranty.
KEH.com is a reseller site that has a wide range of lenses,. Again, they rate their gear and they come with various warranties.

[wq9nsc]

The best all around sports lens is a 70-200 f2.8  I shoot a wide variety of sports, I always use at least two camera bodies, and a 70-200 f2.8 will always be on one of them.  For sports, the body with the 70-200 f2.8 will account for the overwhelming percentage of images I capture at an event.

A lens with a narrower widest aperture (i.e. f4 instead of f2.8) will be lighter and less expensive than an f2.8 lens but you will appreciate the extra light gathering ability because very few school sports facilities have excellent lighting.  It also has an advantage in blurring the background by creating a shallower depth of field compared to a f4 or "slower" lens.

Location is the other big question with sports.  If you are shooting for the yearbook, then you should have field access and if so a 70-200 f2.8 (especially with your APS-C sensor R10) is perfect for most of the sports activity indoors or out.  If you don't have field access, then a longer lens is needed but even with a longer lens you are at a huge disadvantage if you don't have field access for sports.

The six photos below are from five different sports plus a non-sporting event, what they have in common is I captured all of them using my favorite lens which is a 70-200 f2.8  I have several far more expensive prime lenses along with the 200-400 f4 with integrated extender and my other body at events will generally have either a 400 f2.8 prime or the 200-400 integrated extender lens BUT the 70-200 f2.8 will ALWAYS be in use.

And on edit:  Yes, a longer telephoto lens is nice but they are heavier and very expensive.  I have Canon's EF 200 f2, 300 and 400 f2.8, and 800 f5.6 primes and they are all incredible lenses but they are very heavy and extremely expensive.  I use the 400 f2.8 heavily for football and soccer and I am in the small minority of people who handhold the lens for sports (no monopod, I don't like the way they limit my mobility).  There are some images only a longer lens is going to capture (i.e. isolate a player far downfield) but probably 85 percent of what you want to capture at HS level sports can be done with a 70-200 which gets you out to the equivalent of 320 mm on your APS C body R-10.  Before I acquired my 400 f2.8, I shot a lot of football with a 300 f2.8 as my longest lens.  The 7th photo was captured Friday night with the EF 400 and I love how it works but you don't have to have glass like that to capture most of what you want to photograph on the field 🙂

Rodger

EF 400

[Tronhard]

Considering your gear list of fairly high-end cameras and lenses, your comment about cost of the telephoto lenses you mention is appropriate and cautionary, and I suspect may be outside the aspirations of the OP - but again, I note the lack of a budget.   

I can only agree with the use for indoor use of a lens such as the 70-200 f/2.8 and f/4, with the note (as you did) of the difference in price and weight offering benefits to an f/4 unit.

Also, the fact that the OP has an R series APS-C body as opposed to your FF DSLR bodies offers opportunities for the OP because of the availability of glass not available in the EF range.

[Ron888]

Others have covered things quite well so i'll keep my comments to buying used gear.
For a few years i was buying and selling used as a way to try out different lenses.I cant remember ever having a problem with a canon lens.They tend to be very reliable.As Trevor says above,stick with good sellers who offer a warranty and things should go well.
Oh, and i notice no one has mentioned focus speed.
Sports can be a real struggle for a camera's focus tracking ability! The worst case scenario is where someone is running towards the camera.When they're any closer than ,say 20m,only high end cameras will be getting most shots in focus.Your R10 has quite good focus tracking but in that situation it will struggle.
The upshot of all this?Try to buy fast focusing lenses if possible.But also learn where the camera's limits are so you dont get discouraged.
My opinion for what it's worth- get a new or used* 70-200mm f4 'L' lens with image stabilization.The f2.8 version is better in low light but the shallower depth of field at f2.8 will also mean more focus errors.

*Used will likely mean an older EF version which you'll attach via an EF-RF adapter. I'm using a first gen EF70-200/2.8L on my R10.It works well

[ebiggs1]

"The f2.8 version is better in low light but the shallower depth of field at f2.8 will also mean more focus errors."

Yes "better" but in perspective it is only one stop. Now one stop is nice to have but it is hardly a make or break option.

For the average amerture photographer wanting to do outdoor sports for the Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 is still the best performance vs price lens out there. I would buy a Canon 70-200mm either f4L or f2.8L lens first the big Tammy second if outdoor sports is on the table. You mentioned soccer.