55-200mm VR for soccer shot?

[stupidbloke]

shot a tournament once, and the most important friend to you is the sun, trust me you can even tell the difference is the sky suddenly has a little more clouds. i shot with my only available long lense at that time a 200mm f4. it was a manual focus nikkor.

only way was to depend on hyper focusing. which turned pretty well actually. shoot at like f8 bump up the iso 200 maybe 400. cause you wont see the noise anyway - it becomes obvious mostly in shadows. i found that vr doesnt help with motion blur, it kills of handshake mostly. and im not a tripod/monopod person cause i think it inhibts me if i suddenly need to turn and shoot.

 

[cichlid]

I've got a shot at 120mm taken at a neighbourhood football field. (Don't know if it is the same size as a actual full size field). I was standing a the side line.

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Hope this help in your lens selection

 

[MrJelly]

I've got a shot at 120mm taken at a neighbourhood football field. (Don't know if it is the same size as a actual full size field). I was standing a the side line.

[

Hope this help in your lens selection

120mm? look good.

 

[cutter]

If your event is taking place with good sunlight, it is very easy to get good action shots at 200mm. Remember to have a fast SD card with good capacity. Set to motordrive and fire off bursts at the D40's decent 2.5 fps. You will have an excellent chance of grabbing a good frame or two from the burst sequence.

The 55-200mm VR is a decent enough lens in good lighting for action shots even at 200mm f/5.6, since you are likely to more worried about overexposure when the meter maxs-out at 1/4000 in good sunshine... the greater depth-of-field can also improve the focusing issue (larger apertures like f/2.8 at telephoto-lengths means your focusing must be spot on).

The advice to hang around the goal ends is good as you can minimise movement with head-on shots vs shots of moving objects from the side (meaning that you have to pan).

If close enough to the players (esp the goalkeeper) the use of a flash can even do a bit to grab dramatic shots. If in poor light, flash with slow sync at a close-range moving player can give you some nice effects.