Best lens for shooting indoor sports

mane311

I recently got the D3300 and have been using the 18-55mm lens that came with it for shooting basketball and volleyball. Was wondering if there was a better lens I might want to use?

bruto

The faster the lens the better, and you probably want more reach, but what that translates to is, unfortunately, money. Decide first of all how much closer you'd like to zoom than you do now, and how much action you're missing because of the slow lens aperture and the slow auto focus. The D3300 has pretty good high ISO performance, which helps a lot, but for sports a faster zoom would be a great advantage. Even though a high ISO image can be pretty good, lenses with larger apertures generally focus faster too.

Exactly what to choose remains a question, and that depends a lot on your budget. Nikon makes relatively inexpensive 55-200mm and 55-300mm lenses that are still pretty slow but sharp and with plenty of reach. If all you want is more reach, that's a possibility, but it will be hard to capture fast moving subjects, especially in poor light. There's a 70-300mm that has no faster aperture but better AF performance, sharpness and build quality, for more money. When you get into faster apertures, you're looking at lots of money, but if you can afford an f/2.8 zoom you'll be happier yet.

Third party lenses are also a possibility, though I'm not familiar with what's out there. It's worth looking around the web and asking around to see what people think about different things.

Remember if you're buying used or without entirely knowing what is what, that your camera cannot auto focus with a lens that has no internal motor. AFD lenses, which depend on a motor in the camera, will not auto focus for you. Also remember that as you go longer, vibration reduction, though not absolutely necessary, is very nice to have.

mane311

Thank You so much. I will most likely start on the lower end. Don't really think I know enough about the camera to invest in a really expensive lens. Can always work my way up to that. Again thank you for pointing me in the right direction!