Good lens for hockey?

<p>Hello, </p>

<p>i'm looking forward to photograph hockey games and i'll like to get some comments on the lenses you are using. My body is a 7D.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>I don't know what kind of hockey (professional, kids games, etc) but I have been shooting my kids practice using 1D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4 IS. I find that I don't need particularly fast lenses because ice reflects light pretty good so I am able to reach fast shutter speeds. </p>

<p>Depending on where you are shooting you could get by with the f4.0 but if your rink is semi dark - like most pee-wee / local ones - then you'd want the f2.8 70-200. </p>

<p>70-200 is a nice focal length for hockey - especially if you're near the ice.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>A NHL puck weights about the same as a 26mm F1.1 Switar in C mount. For practice an old Jupiter-8 might be cheaper<em></em><em></em></p>

<p>Two lenses have proven to be invaluable to me with youth hockey and indoor soccer. I have a 70-200 f/2.8L IS and an EF 100mm f/2.0, both on a 40D body. The latter lens is my favorite with indoor sports. I have found it to be a fast focusing little jewel. It also makes for a very nice portrait lens with my 5DII</p>

<p>Two lenses have proven to be invaluable to me with youth hockey and indoor soccer. I have a 70-200 f/2.8L IS and an EF 100mm f/2.0, both on a 40D body. The latter lens is my favorite with indoor sports. I have found it to be a fast focusing little jewel. It also makes for a very nice portrait lens with my 5DII</p>

<p>Michael</p>

<p>I take lots of kids hockey as I have two kids who play. In my experience the 70-200 F2.8 is the lens to go for. I usually shoot from the edge of the bench so that I am not shooting through the glass. I find that aperture priority works best. I shoot in Canadian arenas in Alberta (the kids play in Canmore). I find a number of things that you might want to be aware of:<br>

1 The light varies a lot across the arena so manual is not the best setting<br>

2 The colour of the light varies from tungsten / orange to fluorescent depending on the arena - either take the colour temp by shooting the ice and set from a shot of the ice or use an Expodisk or similar<br>

3 The arenas are darker than they look - the kids play at one where you have LV (EV 100ISO) of 7! Thus I use a 70-200 F2.8 (non IS). With my 5DII I can probably get away with my 70-200 F4 L IS but with the 7D you need an F2.8 or faster lens. With an F2.8 lens I can usually get ISO 1600 F2.8 and 1/250 to 1/500 as a shutter speed.<br>

4 I usually set aperture priority and F2.8 as the exposure and then dial in about 1/3 of a stop of exposure comp on the 7D. I generally shoot JPEG but sometime shoot RAW bursts (the problem is you can end up with 500 shots to process so JPEG in camera works best).<br>

Whatever advice you take make sure the people who give it shoot hockey. There have been many posts on this forum from well meaning people who don't shoot hockey and therefore underestimate the difficulties. Hockey is a difficult subject. The glass is a problem, if you shoot from the end of the bench you need to be aware of the game flow (I have seen a photographer have his camera hit by players!). The arenas are much darker than you think when you use a camera (your eyes adjust well). You must have fast USM AF in the lens even then with a 7D using a center AF point in AI Servo you will have between 3% and 5% of shots out of focus. The 7D is usable but not great at ISO 3200 and you need to try and shoot ISO 1600. The 7D is sensitive to exposure accuracy at higher ISOs so you need to nail exposures - if not the images are very noisy (my old 1DIIN was better in this respect). The puck moves very fast and even at 1/500 it will be slightly blurred when shot - a shot captures at 1/250 will have a very blurred puck.<br>

I have posted a couple of compressed shots from last Sat taken in Canmore AB in the new arena which is fairly bright. They have not been selected for merit but merely to illustrate my logic above. They are unprocessed except for compression to allow on screen display.<br>

To answer your question on lenses a 70-200 F2.8 is a must - any of the three will work as you do not need IS. If you want a prime then the 135 F2 works best but it is too long for shots close to the boards. Obviously this means you need to get at least $1000 worth of glass but it really is very difficult to shoot with slow glass and slow AF.</p>

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<p>Another shot to show the speed of the puck - earlier in the same game (#1 is my middle kid and this is a practice game)</p><div></div>

<p>Sorry for the double post. Not done intentionally. </p>

<p>Mostly I agree with Philip Wilson, above. Since I've lately been shooting the big boys in well-lit rinks, the problems with lighting are not as severe as they were in all those dim Alberta rinks with smaller kids.<br>

I certainly agree with the 70-200 2.8. I have both the IS and non IS variety, and I prefer the non IS for sports because action requires a fast shutter, so the IS doesn't add much. Also, having dropped my IS lens from 18" and then paying a $700 bill, I love my non IS lens even more. These days (with new sensors) the fast 2.8 glass isn't as critical, but 2.8 is still gold. Definitely worth it. Right now I'm using an MK IV but I shot tens of thousands of hockey images using a 20D, and for a while there I was using studio lights for creative effects. 5D was an ironic step backward because of the slower shutter rate.<br>

In the rinks I now shoot in, usual settings are ISO 3200, 1/1250, f 2.8-3.5, manual exposure. I disagree with Philip about exposure. For action on-ice photos, I never use anything other than manual exposure, adjusted to about +1 EV for the rink to make the ice white. I think manual exposure is marginally faster, but more importantly your sensor won't be fooled as much by too much white ice against a variable dark background in the stands. With a fast shutter speed you will notice that those rink lights are cycling and often on the same circuit, so you may have to manually adjust the WB of keepers in photoshop. (The 'shutter speed' of the human eye doesn't detect cycling but shoot for a day and notice the dramatic difference shot to shot). That said, I shoot purely in large jpg, no RAW because it's not necessary and it's slower (though you'll have to use curves to properly adjust WB of a jpg image later).<br>

Technique wise, if the kids are really small then you can often get onto the team bench. Remember the closeup shots of kids hanging over the bench. When getting close bench shots I'll switch back to Av exposure mode to open up the light around the face. I usually hang out behind the visiting team goal at ice level, since you'll get faces more often than you will from the opposite end. Another critical technique issue is to program your camera to focus with your right thumb. In older cameras this was the CF4 adjustment. This way you dissociate focus from shutter release, avoiding back-focus which is so common otherwise. The vast majority of professionals use this technique.<br>

I definitely agree with adjusting WB in camera at the start of a shoot and then sticking with it. Avoid underexposure at all costs as noise is a huge issue. In photoshop, get the full CS5 program since you'll find that curves is a real friend. Finally, the most important photoshop plugin that I own is Noise Ninja for noise reduction. Anybody who shoots hockey needs to understand how noise reduction software works. Nikon have put this directly into their cameras but Canon have left it for post production.<br>

Have fun and good luck shoot lots. All but my youngest are now gone, and now I have to buy a ticket to watch my own kid play. Consider making an electronic slideshow DVD for the parents at the end of the season. I use Proshow Gold.</p><div></div>

<p>I only shoot hockey once or twice a year. In my case it's pro hockey (Switzerland), the arena has pretty good lighting, and I managed to get away with 70-300 4.5/5.6 (missing a few shots here and there due to slow AF). I once tried junior hockey on a smaller arena and I realized a faster lens was required for that.<br>

I use a 7D at ISO 1600, due to fast shutter speed IS is pretty much irrelevant. In my experience spot metering is a good choice, since exposition can get fooled by the huge amount of white, especially for players with dark jerseys.<br>

Last time I was forced to shoot behind the plexiglass... Try to avoid that at all costs.</p>

 

<p>Dave - I find Av works better than manual in most of the rinks I shoot in due to significant lighting variations. For example in Canmore's Thelma Crowe Arena (the newer one) there is 2.5 EV difference in lighting across the rink as the action goes between the big overhead lights. Some arenas such as Cochrane are evenly lit so manual works better in those arenas. With the 7D I find the ISO3200 is only really usable in emergency (this is where the APS-H sensor series beats the APS-C sensor - my 5DII is good at ISO 3200 but the AF less impressive).</p>

<p>My limited experience shooting hockey in municipal arenas has been that the lighting is not great and you need all the speed you can get. Fast primes would be great if the action stayed in one place, but it doesn't, so unless you can show up with multiple bodies like the pros do, a 70-200/2.8 is probably going to be your go-to lens. Out of my modest lens collection, it's easily the one I've found to be the most useful for hockey.</p>

<p>Thanks everybody, i know what will be my next purchase...</p>

 

<p>Thanks everybody, i know what will be my next purchase...</p>