Recommended sports lens

jessdavies14

Hi there everyone, I need some advice on my D3100 please. I've been using my D3100 for about a year now with the 18-55mm vr lens. I apologize in advance if I ramble on a bit but maybe someone could point me in the right direction if that's possible. I use my D310O mostly for sports. My one son plays rugby and my other son plays football. Though I have captured many amazing shots with the lens I currently have, I feel something is missing. I'm wondering if there is a perfect lens out there for getting close up shots with the ability to keep up the fast moving pace of the game without compromising the quality of the shots. I am still very much a beginner and I have nowhere near reached the full capabilities of this camera and the lens I have. I'd love to get to the nitty gritty bits, but I'm just unsure where to start so any advice on this as well would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

bruto

Unfortunately, the best answer to your question is a fast telephoto or zoom telephoto lens, which translates to lots of money.

For well lit outdoor sports you can get away with a slower consumer zoom such as the 55-300mm or the 55-200mm and with practice can do quite well. Those lenses are good and sharp, but the relatively small apertures make autofocus a bit slow, and when light gets poor, shutter speeds will also be a little slow unless you crank up the ISO.

The consumer zooms such as the DX 55-300mm can capture action pretty well with practice, but it does take some practice. The 55-300mm can get a lot done, especially if you are able to pre-focus fairly near the vicinity of expected action. AF performance can be a little slow for fast acting sports shots if you are changing distance a lot, but is decently quick if the change is minor.

When shopping around for lens bargains, including used, remember that the D3xxx family has no in-camera focus motor. Older AF lenses, some of which are grand optically, will not auto focus unless they are AFS (with their own motor).

BowleggedSnake

Not sure how far away you are from your sons on the field, and how closeup of a shot you want to take, but as stated before you could get by with a 55-200mm or even a 55-300mm (for longer range). I shoot a lot of my kids also playing sports (baseball/softball), but most of the time I'm shooting from the fence with a 55-200mm with VR.
As stated above, if you can get fairly close to where a determined shot is going to be, you can catch the shot. You can also use back button focusing with your D3100. That is the AE-L/AF-L button on the back of your camera. It's a bit faster focusing (for me anyway) for shooting sports. YouTube has video tutorials for back button focusing with a D3100.
Happy Shooting!