Fast lenses for night action shots

sifro wrote:

catastrophe wrote:

I think that you need a zoom or you will need a collection of primes which is not super practical.

This is indeed something I was starting to think about. I really like the image quality of prime lenses, although now even if I only have 3 lenses, they already start to feel like "too many" (and I already would like to get a couple more!).
At the same time, I think that if I know in advance what kind of shot I want to achieve, this shouldn't be too much of a problem.
In other words, prime lenses should teach me how to create a great shot in my mind first, rather than "stumbling" on it.
Agree?

Looking at your samples you may be able to use just a 24-70 FF equivelent.

Agree. For the moment I never happened to even wish a focal length longer than 56mm (I'm talking about lenses for APS-C cameras).

Borrow a 16-80 zoom and see how that works. For dance you need a high shutter speed, DOF and light. If you are at f2.8, high ISO and a low SS you need a better sensor or more light or both. I believe that good AF is important. I would not like to manually focus on fast moving danse with low DOF.

Yes, the other day I realized the importance of AF (in my next post i'm going to post some pics I took). Although I'm not sure about this high DOF thing. I think that with good tecnique, and being very free to move to get the best angle, a shallow DOF is totally fine, if not even better.

A wide angle lens is not that good for portraits, it can work for an image of an entire room but perhaps not for one or to people

What about this kind of shot though?

https://www.nilsandbianca.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/your-crement-BELLA-POSIZIONE.jpg

It seems to me that it's been taken with a short lens (maybe 15mm or even less?) and it would be pretty cool to create some nice special effects.

I shoot in very low light all the time (theatre and music) and the 16-55 and 50-140 f/2.8s have been my go-tos for many years despite being a bit slower than the fast primes (which I also have). For what you’re doing, I’d absolutely use the zoom. If you shoot RAW (and if you want decent results, you should), the end result will typically be at least as good as with the primes and you won’t miss anything.