Looking to upgrade from the SL1

[zataka]

Hey y’all, I’ve been getting into photography recently and I have a canon SL1 with the 18-55 and 70-300 kit lenses. I also invested in a 50mm 1.8F lens. I mainly shoot candid events with my friends, especially in low light, portraits and sports photography. I’m not too sure whether it’s how I use the camera, but I have noticed that it misses a lot of shots when doing sports photography and it has horrible low light performance (again could be just me) I was looking to either upgrade the body or invest in some lenses or even just lighting. My budget is currently not super solid but any advice on any price range would help. But I’ve been looking into the canon R series but I’m really open to any gear advice. Thanks again yall

[stevet1]

zataka,

You say your camera, "misses a lot of shots when doing sports photography".

What do you mean, " misses a lot of shots"?

Are they out of focus, or are too dark, or what?

As far as low light,  you need as wide an aperture as you can get for its light gathering capabilities. If you have a static subject that isn't moving, you can lengthen your shutter speed, but if you have a moving subject, decreasing or slowing down your shutter speed will introduce blur.

The kit lenses you mention probably don't go below f/4, and this may not be wide enough for your purposes. You're probably better off with the 50mm and dropping it down to f/2.8.

What kind of scenarios do you shoot in low-light? Are they a studio or home where you can add more light, or are they a concert where you have no control over the lighting?

Steve Thomas

[deebatman316]

The OP may actually have the EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 III or any other variant of the EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 lens. This lens is know to be poor optically. It is also know to have a slow AF called Micro Motor which was first released in 1993. This AF motor was commonly used in older non-STM variants of the EF-S 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6/ IS lenses. Asia got Micro Motor USM variants of the EF-S 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 Micro USM lenses. But those lenses were not as fast a lens with a Ring Type USM AF motor.