NIKON Nikkor 18-200mm AF-S VR

[SkipT]

Here is one I took at night I know there has to be somthing I can do diff. These are all shot off hand no support.

This unretuched and shot as a jpg. The EXIF data is on picture when you up load or no?

[Len J]

Here is one I took at night I know there has to be somthing I can do diff. These are all shot off hand no support.

This unretuched and shot as a jpg. The EXIF data is on picture when you up load or no?

That helps a lot.

There are a few problems with what you are doing that are creating less than optimally sharp pictures.

1.) You are shooting at f/4 This hurts your sharpness in 2 ways. First off.......you are shooting the lense almost completly wide open (at 55MM Wide open is 3.5). Most lens's, this one included are sharpest slightly stopped down. In this case, your going to get sharper pictures at about f/8.....Secondly.....f/4 is a pretty narrow Depth of Field for the scene you are trying to photograph. That means that a very narrow area, equally distant from the camera will be in focus, with everything else in-front of & behind out of focus. What was your focus point?

2.) You are shooting at 1/60's for a 55 MM focal length. That is not fast enough to freeze anything that is moving, so your picture appears soft.....because your subject moved while the shutter was open. In addition, even the smallest camera shake will add to this problem.

You are in a tough situation shooting this subject in this light. You need a faster shutter speed which will require a higher ISO which is going to bring noise into the picture but you also need to stop down the lense to get an adequate DOF.........

An 18-200 is not going to to help you here The only 3 solutions I can think of are:

1.) A faster lense
2.) A better snesor. I have a D300 that I'm comfortable shooting up to about iso 2000...that's a stop & 1/2 better than you shot that picture with. A D700 ($$$$'s) can easily shoot 2 to 2 1/2 stops better than that iso 800 you shot in with low noise levels
3.) A flash.

Hope that helps.

len

[Franglais]

If 55mm is a focal length that you use often and you need to shoot a lot at night then the new 50mm f1.4 would be a good solution (it was only announced 2 weeks ago so I don't think it's available right now). If has a AF-S motor so it would autofocus with your D60. Plus it gives you a whole 3 stops extra light. Instead of shooting 800ISO at 1/60 f4 you could be shooting at 1/250 f2. But you should be shooting at 1600ISO, it makes no sense to shoot at 800ISO in these conditions. You're using shutter priority at 1/60 but this is too slow to freeze the action.

If you want to do a lot of action shots at night then a lens that opens to f2.8 is the minimum. I have the 80-200 f2.8 AF-S. This lens is no longer made so you might be able to pick it up relatively cheaply. But be warned - it's huge and very heavy!

[Loupey]

Skip, I've been shooting Friday night HS football & band for the last 7 weeks and have some thoughts for you:

1) even with fast glass (f/2.8), you will need to crank the ISO to at least 1600 the majority of time with typical HS lighting.

2) good coverage can be obtained from 24mm to 300mm (in effective focal lengths).

3) you don't need to always go for the highest shutter speed - some blurred/panned shots can be quite effective if you don't want to fight the low light situation.


I don't know the Nikon system but I shoot a 1.6x crop Canon and a 70-200mm on that lens is perfectly adequate for most things that require longer reach. But I also use a full-frame body with the 24-105mm on it. So I can certainly understand your reasoning for a 18-200mm lens. I just don't know if that lens is fast enough for your camera (ISO performance-wise) because you will like be in the ISO 3200 range quite frequently.

Hope that helps some (although I didn't really answer any of your questions )