which slr?

[jfc123]

Advice needed. I want to be able to stop action in a low light environment.

Kid is in school dance team and some gyms where they compete have terrible lighting. I would like to zoom in for close ups from bleachers...clonsidering Nikon D300 with VR lens but seem expensive...suggestions or recommendations would be much appreciated. Previously shot pics with N90 and making move to digital.

 

[Zadam]

For your purpose whats more important would be the lens rather than the camera. All modern DSLR's have very good high ISO performance. What you probably want is:

1) Get a lens that can do telephoto at as wide an aperture as possible. Wide aperture = more light = faster shutter speed.

and...

2) Set the DSLR camera to a reasonably high ISO like 800 or 1600, even 3200 if the light is REALLY bad. The ISO you choose here will be based on how wide your aperture is, how fast your subjects are moving, how "zoomed in" you are, etc etc.

and, a bit less important

3) Have Shake Reduction in either the camera body (in the case of Pentax/Olympus/Sony) or in the lens (Canon + Nikon). Note that shake reduction will only reduce blur from you shaking the camera, it will not prevent motion blur of the subjects you are photographing, and int he case of sports photos your subjects will probably be moving a lot/quickly.

 

[jfc123]

sound advice...Can you recommend a very good lens and decent camera? The kid can be as far as 75 fee away and would like to capture facial expressions if possible.

 

[Zadam]

sound advice...Can you recommend a very good lens and decent camera?
The kid can be as far as 75 fee away and would like to capture facial
expressions if possible.

Most of the current generation of entry level DSLR's (Canon 400/450D, Pentax K200D, Olympus E510, etc etc) come with the option of a "twin lens kit" bundle, where you get a lens that does the wide-angle stuff (for photographing landscapes, people at parties, architecture, etc) and a 2nd lens which is a reasonable telephoto zoom. While this kit telephoto zoom lens isn't exactly brilliant, it's probably the best you can expect without going up to the higher level of telephoto lenses, which are big, heavy, and will cost you more than the camera with 2 lenses kit. It will give you really long reach (usually these tele zooms go up to 300mm, which is around 450mm in 35mm equivalent), but won't be as fast as higher grade stuff, so you will still have to rely on a high ISO plus a tripod/anti-shake if you are shooting in anything other than outdoors during a sunny day.

Oh and it will still work a lot better than any P&S with high zoom factor.