Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hey everyone, I just upgraded from the SD 700 to the T3i with 18-55 IS Kit. I am really excited and cant wait to use it! I am I going to pursue this professionally nor do I have an infinite budget. What I do have are 3 kids who play sports, take part in school plays/concerts and just love being photographed. What I would like to know is what lenses would do best in these certain shooting conditions....

1. Outdoor/indoor sporting activities
2. Indoor school gymnasium plays, with those awful yellow ceiling lights
3. Poor lighting conditions indoors

Also when would I use the lens that came with the camera? Thanks in advance guys/gals. Look forward to hearing from you guys and getting some advice

Your budget and shooting style will greatly dictate what you do here.

The 70-200 MK II IS is great for low light because it's an awesome lens with 4ish stops of Image Stabilization (depends how steady you are). That's over $2k. Maybe a couple of primes would be a better choice? There's the 85 1.8, 50 1.8 or 1.4, the 135 2.0 for a bit more money. I make these recommendations assuming you'll be a bit of a distance from your subjects. If you're closer perhaps the 17-55 2.8 IS or a 24-70 would be appropriate for you? Lenses can either be versatile or very specific. You need to assess how you're comfortable shooting against what you are willing to spend. This may be a trial and error process no matter what advice you get.

FYI: If your shots are coming out yellow it has arguably nothing (a little but near as makes no difference at this point) to do with the lens and more to do with your white balance.

70-200 2.8 is a good one.

I'll just go ahead and post this:

Use the kit lens first!

You'll learn A LOT more about what you need, what you want, and your shooting style if you just stick it out with the kit lens.

That being said, the 70-200L is a great compliment to the kit lens, but without knowing your budget, we can't really recommend the right lens for you.

As for your questions:

1) As posted by genjurok and ions, telephoto lenses are great for indoor and outdoor events, again, what's our budget?!

2) and 3) Indoor plays and low light: anything with a large aperture or great IS (image stabilization) will help taking photos in low light. The "ugly yellow ceiling light" problem can actually be solved in camera with the white balance setting, or in post production through a program such as Photoshop or Lightroom, or even the canon EOS utility that's provided.

Hope this helps!

you could probably get away with a 70-200 f/4L IS, around 1200

Lots of information here. As I am in same situation as well. Thanks guys.