EOS R50: Best lens for football photography

[bayerb]

What lens would be best to use for the canon R50 if shooting football photography 

[wq9nsc]

That is highly dependent upon how close you are to the action.  I shoot football and soccer from the sidelines using a pair of full frame cameras, one with a 70-200 f2.8 and the other with a 400 f2.8 and I do move up and down the sidelines to follow the action.  Sometimes for daytime soccer matches, I will use a 200-400 f4 with built in extender which makes it a 560mm f5.6 and with that lens on one body and the 70-200 on the other I can reasonably cover the field from one location but I will still move about because location is a critical decision for good sports photography.

Your R50 has an APS-C size sensor so the effective focal length is stretched by 1.6X compared to a full frame sensor camera so my preferred 70-200 and 400 mm lenses would be equivalent to 112-320mm and 640mm on your R50 which would provide reasonable coverage from a bit further back (off the sidelines but still fairly close to the field).

The other major considerations are what type of lighting conditions you are shooting under and how much you are willing to spend.  Long telephoto lenses that work well in low light are fairly heavy and expensive.  If you are fortunate enough to photograph football only in good lighting conditions, then smaller far less expensive lenses will work well for you.

My 400 f2.8 lens weighs around 8.5 pounds or around 12 pounds total mounted to a 1DX III body which provides a nice balanced weight.  I am very comfortable hand holding this combo through a football game or soccer match but many people would not be and use a monopod which I find is too limiting for fast movement and choice of placement.

Rodger

[Tronhard]

You might want to have a look at the following video from Brigham Young University, as it discusses both the lenses and the challenges and techniques for shooting football.  Shooting Football Tutorial - Canon Community

Now, since you are using an R50 camara body, which is not a full-frame camera, the numbers for focal lengths referred to in the video can be reduced by a factor of 1.6 to get the lenses you would put on your camera.  So, to get the same Field of View (what the sensor records) as would be rendered by a 160mm lens on a full-frame camera, you would select a 100mm lens to get the same result on your camera body.

[March411]

bayerb, welcome to the site.

The R50 is a nice compact camera that is easy to move around with and carry for a full day. I mostly use my R50 as a backup because of it's size. I use it for baseball (mostly), soccer and football.

I tend to match the lens to the body and use two lenses about 90% of the time. Both of these lenses require good light, overcast days will be alright but dusk and dawn will present challenges. I've found over time that the 100-400 is my primary lens but because of it's focal range I miss some shots in the end zone because I am simply to close. The 24-240 gives me the ability to get those shots when I have it mounted. Both of these lenses are fairly inexpensive and sized right for you body.

You could go out and grab the 100-500mm, which I love but the R50 mount would be challenged to carry the weight. As mentioned the 70-200 is a good lens and either the f4 or f2.8 would be better when there is a loss of good light but range of the lens may be a challenge.  

RF24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM @ $900 - https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/rf24-240mm-f4-6-3-is-usm?color=Black&type=New

RF100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM @ $650 - https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/rf100-400mm-f5-6-8-is-usm?color=Black&type=New

There is a lot that goes into the decision. Without a budget and knowing the particulars of the environment you will be shooting in my recommendations are based on personal experience with the body. YMMV  

[ebiggs1]

"What lens would be best to use for the canon R50 if shooting football photography "

When we get these queries, everybody always start throwing out a bunch of longer FL lenses and what's your budget. However neither of that means much unless from where you will be shooting from is known. Are you confined to the stands or bleachers? Are you permitted to be on field or sidelines? As you may have gathered you are going to need a longer FL lens in either case. Now the question is just how long? Shooting from the sidelines a 200mm lens might work and shooting form the grand stands a 600mm may not be long enough.

Then comes the how much light is available at the football stadium. This mean a slower lens may struggle to get you fast enough SS to stop action. Any number above f4 to f5.6 is going to be considered a slow lens. A number below f4 is considered a fast lens.

"You could go out and grab the 100-500mm, which I love but the R50 mount would be challenged to carry the weight."

Somebody will always bring this up and it is basically not a factor. You never use the camera to support a big tele. Always, always use the lens to support the camera. I agree a R50 can look pretty small on the end of a super zoom like one of the 150-600mm lenses but that's all.

If you could supply us a little more info perhaps we can recommend the best lens and the best buy for you. In the meantime there are a few things that you can do that are free. One is d/l from Canon DPP4 photo editor. Second make sure you set the R50 to shoot raw and not jpg, never ever use jpg. DPP4 will u/l your images to your computer and convert them automatically form your R50. And, probably the most important thing is know your sport. How well do you know football? If you don't know what is going on or what is about to happen your chance of getting good photos is pretty slim to none no matter what gear you have.

[March411]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

How well do you know football? If you don't know what is going on or what is about to happen your chance of getting good photos is pretty slim to none no matter what gear you have.

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I would respectfully disagree, you can get beautiful shots and as the game moves forward you will only get better. 

Also, I will say again from personal experience that larger lenses will stress the mount if you don't heed EB's advice and support the lens. I have seen many people at football and baseball games run to a new location with the lens dangling and the owner simply holding the body. Not every knows the proper method to support a larger lens so it's always worth mentioning.

[ebiggs1]

Totally agree Marc. People should but often don't use common sense with their photo gear.

"I would respectfully disagree, you can get beautiful shots and as the game moves forward..."

Here we will disagree. I also teach music and every so often we have music festival contests where the students get graded on their solos. One young man told me it has a lot to do with the three judges you get and luck. I agreed with him but I said and the more you practice the luckier you will get. I used to do DSLR 101 classes and the same rule applies but in this case the better you know your sport, the better your chances are for a great photo. But to your point, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while. So if that is your approach, good luck to you.

Learning your sport and getting DPP4 and using raw is of utmost important as there is no other single things that can improve a person's photos more than those things. The best part, they are free. Common sense!

[March411]

We agree that learning the sport will garner better results but it's really not about the sport it is about the flow of the game. I recently shot a preseason game for a friend, his son is a receiver. There was a young man on the sideline that was struggling. Even though he was holding a Nikon I still explained to him that regardless of which team he was shooting/playing for the QB is the beginning of the flow, start wide, follow the flow and zoom to the action. His hit rate improved greatly but he knew zero about the game. I explained that this process worked for both offense and defense. I also told him that by watching the QB he would learn where the play was going as it developed.

So I will maintain my position and we can agree to disagree. I am a believer that action photography, whether it be sports, wildlife or aviation photography it is more about realizing and learning the rhythm or flow to get good images. After watching and photographing large birds of prey I realized that when perched a large percentage of the time they take off into the wind, I found the best position. To use your phrase, it's mostly common sense.

[Tronhard]

I am coming at this from the perspective of a non-specialist sport photographer, but considering how I work with animals and watching the videos from BYU, I think there are parallels to be drawn that may be relevant.

First, one must study the behaviour of the players, know the rules and body language and have a sense for the flow of the action to anticipate what may happen next.  This will reap benefits in being in the right place, ready with the right optic and catching the right moment. 

I was struck by one comment that the presenter of the video was saying that he expected that a player would characteristically perform some action after making a touchdown and, having placed himself strategically to get the score with the right background, quickly moved to catch the moment of exultation, again with the right contextual view.

I am totally lost as regards American football, but I believe the same principles apply to any sport - be it rugby (NZ's national religion), golf or track events.  This all has to be done within the spatial limits set by the field management. 

I went to a rugby game here in Auckland and, knowing the organizers were prickly about people turning up with big ILCs and lenses, I brought along a Sony RX-10IV super-zoom bridge camera with a 1" BSI/stacked 20MP sensor and focal range equivalent to 24-600. When they examined the bags, I just looked dumb and handled it all wrong - I got in.  I placed myself in the stands, (no on-field privileges here) just behind the touch-down line so that I could catch players to some degree from the front as they scored.  Once I had found a seat I had to stay there as it filled up fast.  I shot three games in dimming light (being winter as the afternoon turned towards dusk), so I was shooting with auto ISO and M mode.

This is what I got:
RX-10, 412mm, f/4, 1/1000sec, ISO-2000 RX-10, 238mm, f/4, 1/1000sec, ISO-5000 RX-10, 400mm, f/4, 1/1000sec, ISO-640 RX-10, 74mm, f/3.5, 1/1000sec, ISO-4000 
I realize that these are not professional-grade images but I am OK with them considering this is the first live game of rugby I have attended.  It's like admitting I never went to church and living in the Bible Belt! 😊

Two things I learned from this, apart from location and game flow, was the ability to have a variation of focal lengths available - I was close to some of the action, but other stuff was at the other end of the field.

As an aside I think Canon should have continued to work on a compact super zoom like the Rx-10 - it's a specialized, but amazingly popular market.  I did have the PowerShot GIIIX, with the same focal range and a 1" sensor, but it was not a patch on the Sony for speed, focus, image quality and handling and had an add-one EVF that was clunky, fragile and generally got in the way - shooting at 600mm, one needs to use an EVF for bracing as much as anything else.

[ebiggs1]

You have simply used different words to say the same thing. It called tautology, BTW.