Ive got a Canon 350d and was wondering what the best lens to get for taking mountain bike action pics

Thanks

Martin

I've got a 70-200mm f4 which I use around 100mm alot.
17-40mm f4 for when you can get a bit closer, really close, I've had pedals brush me!!!
28mm f2.8 in lower light, this gives a nice distirtion.

I'll be filling in the gap with the 24-70mm f4 as soon as I can, then looking for a fisheye.

Alot depends on budget and discipline. Downhill? XC?
I liked the 85mm f2.8, good price $300 and great colours and bokeh. But I imagine you'll be looking for a zoom so 70-200L f4 is well worth the money.

for the money, a good quality 70-200 F4 second hand ( and new of course ) is extremely hard to beat … its arguably canon's sharpest zoom lens.

It definitely has a certain pop to photos. Where you *might* find you start to get issues is whether the auto focus can keep up with the bikes … that greatly depends on how you have the camera setup and what you're shooting, however, when the the focus is right, its outstandingly sharp and clear, even wide open.

IMO you'll get much better resuts with a faster prime, 50mm or so. Low end DX sensors struggle with motion and low light so if you can do without a zoom give one a try.

If you're talking about the cheap 50mm, I wouldn't as it is ridiculously slow at focusing and not,IMHO, strong enough for a day following mountain bikes.
Higher quality 50's wil start eating the money!!
Have a look here for some quality second hand lenses. Godd qulaity secondhand over crap new every time.

depends where you want to be. A lot of wooded riding makes anything around 50mm very hard to get far enough away from the action. If i had to take one lens out riding with me it'd be a sigma 10-20

but it's a personal thing. Go riding with your camera, take some photos and see what you find is lacking (too slow to focus/too cropped/not enough 'quality' etc). Otherwise its like saying 'what £2000 bike' when you've never been riding

I've recently borrowed a sigma 10-20 and for me it's just too wide to get consistently a sharp pic – took me half an hour to get this

Despite knowing exactly the path the rider would be following and the point where I wanted to take the photo I just struggled to get something decent

This was taken with a 70-200 f4L and was much easier – the autofocus is better and the image overall is sharper. Much further away though and ahrder to get that sense of action

http://eventphotos.fotopic.net/p65918958.html

Later I switched t my 28-105, now that has a more sensible focal length and allows me to get close enough to get the panning for the "action" shots while retaining a little distance from the action (for personal safety if nothing else!) and some room to recompose

http://eventphotos.fotopic.net/p65919039.html

as 5lab says, work out what bit of your photos you;re not happy with then take it from there. I bought the 28-105 as an "upgrade" from the kit lens as I was convinced it would help me take better photos. It's better quality but not wide enough for me. The 70-200f4L is FAR better quality, and covers a completely different focal length range: as I said above, the 10-20 I'm finding just *too* wide for everyday use.

What I'd ideally like is a 17-55f2.6IS USM, but at the best part of £900 rrp it may be a while…

(Quick edit, struggling to show fotopic photos, will see if I can worok out how to do it)

To be fair, it's less about the lens and more about the way you use it, where you're shooting, and what sort of shot means 'action' to you! IMO of course! 🙂

If 'action' means freezing the rider solid in mid air, you need the fastest thing you can get your hands on! Canon prime 50mm f1.8 will do the job well, but isn't particularly versitile.
EG –

Personally, I like some movement (Blur) in my action shots. I reckon you can make someone look faster than they were with a little bit of thought.
To be fair, you can achieve this with any lens really, it really is the way you use it that counts.
Go and look up '2nd curtain synch' (Sometimes rear curtain) flash. Basically, the flash fires at the end of the exposure and only has a limited range, so you use a slow shutter speed (1/40th maybe?) which then blurs the background as you pan the camera and the flash freezes the action in the foreground. This one was done with the onboard flash, when I was very new to the technique, and the flash has frozen the rider a bit too much for my liking. It's a bit harsh looking back now, although I loved it at the time! –

As I tend to shoot in a lot of woodland, I invested in a cheap fully manual flashgun (Vivitar 285hv) based on recommendations from STW, and some Cactus V4 remote triggers. The whole lot was under £100. Off camera flash produces more natural images IMO (Although I can still improve on these with flash filters)
This was one of the very first shots I did with the remote flash. Not good, too much shadow, too harsh, and I was in the wrong place. But the motion blur is starting to come…..

Later the same day I shot this, which is a tad better although the background is too dark for my liking. The motion blur is coming through more on the bike and the water, and his face is nice and sharp. I needed to be lower down to get his eyes in though, again –

More recently I've put in the practice by shooting at local XC races. This one has the flashgun on the camera, flash on a low power, lots of blur which I like.

And this one was virtually perfect conditions to shoot in. Lovely dappled sunlight. I managed to get down low (See, I learned from the mistakes above!) and get the eyes and face in sharp foucs, leave some blur on the bike and rider, and have a lovely light green/sunny background. I've had more tips on how to improve on this since I shot it though. So I'll try them!

So basically, what I'm trying to say is don't think a new lens (or any other kit) will magically make you take better pics. I've put a bit of work in going to races (Captive audience, see!) and taking the same shot over and over until I'm happy it's as good as I can get it. I've done a bit of reading, asked advice and tried to learn new techniques, then get better at them with lots of practice. I don't think I'm all that good, by any means, and the skills I do have are very focussed towards one or two things (MTB action in woodland mainly!) but it's coming together and I enjoy it, which is what matters I think.
As a real bonus, I've just been asked to be official snapper at an event for the second time, so someone must like my pics!

😀

EDIT
Most pics taken with a (very battered!) Canon 400D, Sigma 17-70 f2.8 lens, Vivitar 285HV flash and Cactus V4 wireless triggers. All budget stuff…. 🙂

NBT, I do like that top shot of the little lad jumping! 🙂

Sigma 10-20 is my next purchase… 🙂

Ta Peter. No flash used on any of my pics, you can shoot sharp at 1/40th without flash and good technique – I need to practise more though, my technique's rubbish at the moment, I was up to 1/80th for those. Faster shutter also help on wider lenses. Remember also that your flash probably won't be wide enough for a 10-20, you might need a diffuser

yeah, its more about what you're using. this shot was taken with the kit lens and internal flash on a 400d..

liking the shots in the swinly forest gully – I got a remote cable for my external flash but its not long enough to do anything like that.

in woods, I think anything above 28mm at its widest would be a bit limiting. The other factor to consider is weight and bulk – I've a 18-200mm VR sigma lens which is fantastically flexible but weighs a fortune.

Might be worth considering the sigma 18-50 f2.8 – reasonably wide, nice and fast, pretty cheap..

What I'd ideally like is a 17-55f2.6IS USM, but at the best part of £900 rrp it may be a while

I have tried most of the standard size zoom lenses and the 17-55 is a cut above them all
Got mine s/hand for 600 quid and although its hard to say its worth the money,i'm glad I bought it

Been reading that new Sigma 18-50 OS at around the 500 mark is very good, so might be worth a look

haventgotone – key questions
what lenses do you have?
what type of shots are you wanting to achieve?

If you're itching to spend then I (a Nikon User) would agree with above comments (based on how I mostly like to shoot) save for a Cannon 70-200 F4 – really good kit – I know a few folk that use, and love, 'em but, then again that's useless if you're looking for 'fisheye' type shots. 😉

My advice (FWIW) is to work with what you have, practice your art and learn the relevant techniques well.
Once you have the technique nailed that may start to show 'failings' in your kit – for example the Canon 'Kit' zoom (18-55?) was known to be not that good, though that may have changed?
However, if you've got your shots nailed, and they look great to you, you've saved some money!
If (OK, when!) you upgrade, upgrade lenses first.

A thought ref. panning shots (blurred background)
The farther you are away from a moving subject, the slower you have to turn (left to right (or vicky-versa)) to pan the shot. if you're right next to the rider your turn speed will be much quicker = harder to get the shot.

Just my 2 pennies worth…

edit
quick picture
my mate, racing his MG Midget at Oulton Park last month.
Nikon 70-200 2.8. Manual exposure 1/125 sec – I've got sharper but love the slight correction to his slide….

LOL – blue box – no idea why it's not linking?? oh well…

you needed to link the url of the image, not of the page. click on 'all sizes', then right click on the 'download large size' and click 'copy shortcut'. et voila

A thought ref. panning shots (blurred background)
The farther you are away from a moving subject, the slower you have to turn (left to right (or vicky-versa)) to pan the shot. if you're right next to the rider your turn speed will be much quicker = harder to get the shot.

True, but the slower you pan, the slower your shutter needs to be to get he blurring of the background, so the better your technique needs to be.

Peter's suggestion of finding a "captive model" at an event or something is a really good one, Marsdenman and I spent an hour at the local MTB race series last week taking photos. Is there anything near you that you could go to?

Edit, the event we attended was this one, you could consider the next one – next Thursday

Cheers 5lab – i knew i'd posted shots off 'new flickr' – just could not remember what to do when i'd done 'all sizes'… <slaps head>

NBT is right – i was going to mention that but the speed the rider (in this case) is tracking across your field of view – faster the the shutter speed you can use and still show blur, or use a lower shutter speed and show more blur.
Bottom line though is practice – at Oulton it took me about 45 mins before I got into in – panning is not an action i normally need when shooting weddings!!
As the day went on I lowered the shutter speed…

Thanks everybody for your reply's its great getting different opinions off everybody I'd only just bought the camera and it come with no lens so was wondering which lens to get I decided in the end that a 50mm 1.8 would be a good start to try with it being a fast lens will let you know how I get on and post some pictures up thanks for all your help Martin.

I just use a bridge camera and am quite happy with results like these. As others have said practice at e.g a race helps – taking the same picture over and over.