Blue Pixel

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 by Reed Hoffmann

Over the years, Nikon's 200-400mm f/4 zoom has become a huge favorite among wildlife photographers. Its reasonable size, fast aperture and ability to zoom has made it a "must-have" lens for this group. It's never been very popular among sports photographers, though, as it wasn't quite fast enough for night sports. That's changing.

If you shoot sports that take place on a large field (think football, baseball, soccer, etc.) then you need a minimum focal length of 300mm to really get out to the action. And if the venue is indoors, that’s always meant you had to have a 300mm f/2.8 or 400mm f/2.8 to get a fast enough aperture to to stop action with high shutter speeds (1/1000 and above). Outdoors, during the day, you’d sometimes want a 500mm or 600mm lens, even though they’re a stop slower, at f/4. Nikon’s introduction of the D3, D700 and now D3S are changing how photographers work. These cameras, with their ability to shoot higher ISO’s and still get great quality, are making photographers re-think what lenses they can use.

I’ve now covered my last two Chiefs home games with the 200-400, and it’s been a joy to use. Since I regularly push the ISO on it up to 4000, I can easily work with its f/4 maximum aperture. In fact, I can even get away with f/5.6, which is what I have when I add the TC14E teleconverter. I use that when the action gets further away from me, as it makes the 200-400 a 280-560mm f/5.6 (.4X increase in focal length and one stop less light). Being able to use those slower apertures (it’s been rainy and overcast both games) allows me to take advantage of the zoom, so when a play comes my way, rather than trying to grab a second camera with a shorter telephoto and get it up in time, I can simply zoom out while following the play. Very cool!

In the first pair of images here, I started at 400mm on the quarterback, and when he throws to a receiver closer to me, I can zoom the lens out to 200mm to get the catch and the tackle. In the second pair of images I’m using the teleconverter for greater focal length, and I start at 550mm as the running back heads my way, and zoom out to 400mm as he comes closer and is tackled.

And now with the D3S and its further expanded ISO range (reviews claim it maintains the same image quality at one-stop higher ISO), this lens will be even more useful. Plus, the 1.2 crop option you can turn on means that when the action gets far away, I can select that and have in-camera cropping for tighter framing, while still having eight megapixels of information. And, I’m looking forward to taking the 200-400 to Big 12 basketball. No more switching cameras as the teams move from one end of the court to the other. Instead I’ll just zoom. Can’t wait!

In the old days we looked to new film stocks to give us more capabilities with our lenses. Now we’re getting that with new camera and sensor designs. The Nikon D3, D700 and now D3S, and Canon’s new Mark IV are letting us push the boundaries of what is possible in high ISO’s. It’s a great new world.