Does a 70-200mm on APS-C have enough reach for Sports and Wildlife?

Hello,

I am looking at buying a telephoto lens for sports and some wildlife.

I shoot on Canon EF-M with an EF to EF-M adapter. I currently have a 24-105mm.

Is a 70-200mm enough reach? Or would it be better to get a 100-400mm to have no overlap of focal lengths and get a more compressed image?

Is f/4 good enough for a 70-200mm or is it worth the extra money for a f/2.8?

luke_tobik said:

Hello,

I am looking at buying a telephoto lens for sports and some wildlife.

I shoot on Canon EF-M with an EF to EF-M adapter. I currently have a 24-105mm.

Is a 70-200mm enough reach? Or would it be better to get a 100-400mm to have no overlap of focal lengths and get a more compressed image?

Is f/4 good enough for a 70-200mm or is it worth the extra money for a f/2.8?

Click to expand...

What precisely are you wanting to shoot - size of animal ? and at what distance ? 20m or 20,000 ? What sort of light situation ? dawn/dusk, night full daylight

What is the purpose of the images ? Hobby ? for sale ? nat Geo ? print ?

Noone can offer advice without knowing the answers to most of these questions

I find 300 too short. It's ok for ducks, sheep and stuff but not much else. I could live with 450, so a 300mm aps-c lens.

Depends on the sport (indoor or outdoor) and type of wildlife.

70-200mm gives you 112-320mm effective field of view, which is plenty for most indoor sports. The 70-200mm is a staple of pros that shoot volleyball and basketball, and that's on full frame. 320mm is kinda short for outdoor games on large fields like football (soccer), American football, rugby, baseball, etc.

With wildlife, 320mm is kinda short for birding and small animals that you can't get close to. For large animals 320mm is probably enough, except that most large animals you want to stay far away from, in which case it's probably not enough.

A 100-400mm will give you 160-640mm, which is plenty for outdoor sports and wildlife.

320mm is OK for an amateur that just wants to put some pics up on facebook or whatever, since they shrink the image size anyway. Anything more than that and you might be dissatisfied.

luke_tobik said:

Hello,

I am looking at buying a telephoto lens for sports and some wildlife.

I shoot on Canon EF-M with an EF to EF-M adapter. I currently have a 24-105mm.

Is a 70-200mm enough reach? Or would it be better to get a 100-400mm to have no overlap of focal lengths and get a more compressed image?

Is f/4 good enough for a 70-200mm or is it worth the extra money for a f/2.8?

Click to expand...

Sports and wildlife photography get difficult because shutter speeds in the range of 1/1000 to 1/2000 seconds are frequently required to capture action.

A 70-200mm f/2.8 is often recommended for indoor sports (basketball, volleyball, etc). The f/2.8 part is very important because indoor sports arenas are dimly lit. Their light level is similar to that inside your home.

For daytime field sports (football, soccer, etc.) and wildlife, the distances are much farther, and the sun provides lots of light. Thus, the lens focal length becomes very important. Outdoor sports and wildlife photographers prefer to use lenses in the 500mm range or greater.

Nighttime field sports are the worst. Even the professional >US$10,000 lenses are only f/4. From what I've seen, pro sports photographers don't hesitate to use whatever ISO is required to get the shot. Those terrific noise-free sports photos we see on websites only look noise-free because they're downsized and displayed only a few hundred pixels wide.


This RAW photo was taken at ISO16,000 by an APS-C camera, then converted to JPEG using Photoshop Sony's Imaging Edge software. No noise reduction has been used. It looks OK because it's been downsized to 600x400 pixels. A local newspaper website uses this size to display its sports photos. The noise in the original, full-sized, photo will give any photographer nightmares.

--
Lance H

luke_tobik said:

Hello,

I am looking at buying a telephoto lens for sports and some wildlife.

Click to expand...

What sport, indoor or outdoor? What animals will be the main photography subjects?

I shot mainly birds with 70-350mm on apsc, which I consider as a bare minimum, better to get up to 400, 500 or 600mm lens

luke_tobik said:

I shoot on Canon EF-M with an EF to EF-M adapter. I currently have a 24-105mm.

Is a 70-200mm enough reach? Or would it be better to get a 100-400mm to have no overlap of focal lengths and get a more compressed image?

Is f/4 good enough for a 70-200mm or is it worth the extra money for a f/2.8?

Click to expand...

Indoor or outdoor? For indoor would be better fullframe camera with f2.8 lens.

As with other answers, it depends.

luke_tobik said:

Hello,

I am looking at buying a telephoto lens for sports and some wildlife.

I shoot on Canon EF-M with an EF to EF-M adapter. I currently have a 24-105mm.

Is a 70-200mm enough reach? Or would it be better to get a 100-400mm to have no overlap of focal lengths and get a more compressed image?

Click to expand...

Both could be suitable. Overlap is not always a bad thing. With one body but two lenses, with things like sports and wildlife, there may not be time to do lens swaps. But taking overlap with either a 70-200 or 100-400, that 70mm to 100mm overlap or gap may not be that important.

luke_tobik said:

Is f/4 good enough for a 70-200mm or is it worth the extra money for a f/2.8?

Click to expand...

The aps-c "crop factor," I'd think, often works to the advantage for sports and wildlife, often the subjects are at some distance. On the near end, if you have particularly close access, once in a while it might be a problem getting wide enough.

With your 24-105, maybe you could scout out a couple of your areas, setting it at 70mm and 100mm, just to see what that's doing for you.

Without knowing many details of your interests, I'd maybe thing 100-400 is more useful than 70-200.

For wildlife, the 70-200 is way too short, especially since you don't have 40+ megapixels to work with. I'd get the 100-400. A 150-600 would be even better.

Haven't done indoor sports.

f4 is fine, but 200mm is too short. You could add a 1.4x but I think an option below would be better.

There are several options on a tight budget:

EF 200mm f2.8 L prime with 1.4x or 2x.

EF 300mm f4 L with 1.4x.

EF 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 L

EF 100-400 L original

I do a mix of everything. It seems like a 100-400 will do well for me. Is the Canon EF 100-400 L II a nice sharp lens? Where can I get a good deal on it?

luke_tobik said:

I do a mix of everything. It seems like a 100-400 will do well for me. Is the Canon EF 100-400 L II a nice sharp lens?

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It is a good all round lens for most wildlife and for sports in good light when you are some distance away from the action, e.g. in the stands rather than on the side line.

--
Chris R

It is one of the sharpest zoom lenses with 400mm in the range. If you want a good deal then try your local Facebook marketplace or kijiji. Otherwise eBay or keh.com. Then there are the big reliable dealers like bhphotovideo.com and adorama.com.

If you can afford it, this is the lens to get. If your camera focuses to f8 you could add an EF 1.4x and easily compete with those big third party zooms. I believe your mirrorless body has AF to f8 and beyond. Which M do you have?

Canon M50

luke_tobik said:

Canon M50

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sure, the EF 100-400 will work with the adapter. I still use the original Canon EF 100-400 for some outdoor day time sports with a Canon full frame mirrorless.