Using a Sony body for night sports with Canon Lenses?

[dwswager]

A friend shoots Canon and would like to shoot sports at night.  He envies the results I get from a Nikon D810.  His Canon has not provided satisfactory results.  His wife has green lighted him to switch to Nikon, but was wondering if there was a less drastic option.

Considering he has the 80-400mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 and a 1.4x TC, is there a Sony body people would recomend that would give him better performance than his 7D for night sports?  Which adapter would you recommend?  Any other issues that he should know about?

Thanks,

Dave

[Paul2660]

Before a move to Sony I would consider the 7D MKII,  it's an impressive move from the much more dated 7D.

They should be able to rent one form lensrentals.com

Paul

[E.J. Peiker]

A friend shoots Canon and would like to shoot sports at night.  He envies the results I get from a Nikon D810.  His Canon has not provided satisfactory results.  His wife has green lighted him to switch to Nikon, but was wondering if there was a less drastic option.

Considering he has the 80-400mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 and a 1.4x TC, is there a Sony body people would recomend that would give him better performance than his 7D for night sports?  Which adapter would you recommend?  Any other issues that he should know about?

Thanks,

Dave

Not gonna work for sports, the AF with an adapter to use his Canon lenses is WAY too slow for Sports.  I assume that's what you meant.  It works great for still shots or landscapes but not for anything that moves.  Even in those situations, many revert to manual focus because it's faster and more accurate than AF using an adapter for Canon lenses that supports AF.

[robdickinson]

I shoot landscapes & people with an a7r and canon lenses with metabones mk4.

I wouldnt even go near autofocus, let alone for sports.

Why is his current canon camera not working well? IMO canon are better at high ISO and low light focusing than Nikon.

[robdickinson]

Ah just seen 7d.

If he shot a D300 would he consider a 5d3?

An 8 year old crop body verses state of the art full frame modern camera?

Just buy a modern canon FF body ffs.

[Ed B]

As Rob said, just get a 5D3, it has great high ISO capability and the price had dropped quite a bit.

[MattNQ]

Going Sony is an unusual option.

As already mentioned he should check out 7DII or a recent Canon  FF first.

80-400 of any flavor are usually too slow for night sports.

F2.8 at ISO 6400 and shutter at 1/500 to 1/750 seems to be the normal settings I need at typical night-time sport venues (mainly shot outdoor netball courts & athletics arena) . Some are worse .

[Tony Jay]

A Sony A7r with metabones adaptor is no good for rapid focusing situations - no matter how good the Canon lenses are.
I suggest a Canon 5D III - brilliant focusing ability and good low-light capability.

Disclaimer: I own both the bodies discussed above.

Tony Jay

[Ken Bennett]

No way on night sports with the Sony/Canon combo. I wouldn't use a D810 either.

+1 on renting a 7D Mark II to test before making a decision. If not, then the 5D3 is remarkably good even though it's not a sports camera. The only downside is the slightly slow frame advance rate.

[hjulenissen]

A friend shoots Canon and would like to shoot sports at night.  He envies the results I get from a Nikon D810.  His Canon has not provided satisfactory results.  His wife has green lighted him to switch to Nikon, but was wondering if there was a less drastic option.

Considering he has the 80-400mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 and a 1.4x TC, is there a Sony body people would recomend that would give him better performance than his 7D for night sports?  Which adapter would you recommend?  Any other issues that he should know about?

Thanks,

Dave

What is the problem with his 7D, and in what way does the D810 improve on that?

I am assuming that he is banging his head up against maximum tele (400mm) and maximum aperture (f/2.8 ). Is he able to purchase a 600mm of equivalent aperture? Is he willing to live with lower DOF/more expensive lenses in exchange for less noise?

I don't know how the example below pans out in terms of perceived image quality, but it would be interesting to see:
Canon 7D
1/400s
400mm f/5.6
ISO 3200

Nikon D810/Canon 5Dmk3
1/400s
600mm f/8.4
ISO 7200

Comparing the 7D to the 7Dmk2 @ ISO3200, raw, it is not apparent to me that we have had great strides in terms of noise these years:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii/11

-h

[dwswager]

Thanks all for the Help!

1. I had not considered the AF issue.  Glad that was highlighted.

2. No, I wouldn't select the D810 as a sports camera, but since it is what I have available and it is a stellar high ISO performer and in 25MP 1.2x crop mode will shoot 6fps (27 frame buffer) in RAW, it's fast enough. (See Shortstop.jpg attachment)  And it is exceedingly rare that any of the Canon shooters are on the sidelines at night.  They tend to get the day games, except football.

3. Yes a new and better body than the 7D would help, but unfortunately Canon isn't giving much to choose from.  Attached is a list of what I would consider top tier high ISO performers.  As you might guess, they are all Full Frame and the only Canon on the list is the 1Dx at the bottom.  Both the 7D and 7DII are marginally outperformed by my D7100!  A list of APS-C cameras is attached and again dominated by Nikon.  (Note lists are only Nikon and Canon).  Five years ago, I recommended nothing but Canon, today...Nikon.  Also attached is a shot with the D810 of my friends oldest daughter (senior).  Both his kids, senior and freshman are Varsity starters.  This is what he wants to do.

[spidermike]

This idea of the D810 not being a sports camera is bunkum - is it he best sports camera? No, not even close. Will it shoot sports for a majority of users - yes.

I remember when I had my 30D and I was looking to upgrade for wildlife and sports - my gear at the time was the 30D with the consumer 70-300. My first step was to buy the 100-400 and when in Orkney I was getting a decent hit rate photographing gulls whipping around the cliffs in a strong wind. That was a real eye opener (no pun intended).
When I got the 7D, out of interest tried the different combinations of lenses and bodies: the 30D with the 100-400 far outperformed 7D with the consumer 70-300 in AF response and accuracy. The benefits the 7D had were in the different AF modes and greater number of AF points. Even now, 5 years later, the xxxD models and the 5DII/6D have a AF system that is an improved version of the one in the 30D.

So based on my experience I would say that any of the Canon bodies (even the 6D/5DII) with a responsive L lens will be OK for a lot of sports, especially if night sports are not the main reason for having the camera.
One notch up would be the 5DIII - it has a superior AF to the 7D but not quite as good as the 7DII and if you do not need to crop extensively then the high ISO will beat the 7D into the ground. If you do need to crop extensively then the higher pixel quality of the 5DIII will overcome the higher pixel density of the 7DII to the point they are pretty much equal.
I even dare say that the Nikon D810 with a good quality lens (whatever their equivalent of the 'L' series is) will do you pretty well for sports. And if you doubt that, think of all the excellent sports shots taken in the time when everything was manual focus and manual frame advance.

If you read websites dedicated to bird photography, where heavy cropping is commonplace and responsive AF is almost essential there is a lot of discussion as to whether the 7DII or the 5D3 is preferable, and overall they jury is very much out. Outside of that speciality, human sports is easy meat.

But the old adage still applies - it's all about the glass.

[dwswager]

So based on my experience I would say that any of the Canon bodies (even the 6D/5DII) with a responsive L lens will be OK for a lot of sports, especially if night sports are not the main reason for having the camera.

I even dare say that the Nikon D810 with a good quality lens (whatever their equivalent of the 'L' series is) will do you pretty well for sports. And if you doubt that, think of all the excellent sports shots taken in the time when everything was manual focus and manual frame advance.

That's his problem.  While club games are during the day, most high school varsity games are at night.  Oddly enough our local high school plays softball Varsity before JV, but the soccer team plays JV before Varsity.  I'm lucky that our school is only 3 years old and has by far the best lit gymnasium in the area. 

I love the D810.  I bought it as a general purpose camera and it works just fine for sports.  Actually faster than either my D7100 or D300 even though the stated frame rate is the same in 1.2x or 1.5x crop modes.  Still, most of my best shots are the 1st one in the burst.  I can crop if I need to and still get usable images and the noise level is significantly better.  While there are things I would change and features I might add, it is IMHO the best general purpose DSLR on the market today.

[robdickinson]

Honestly I would totally discount Dxomark sport / low light shooting values.

The 5d3 and 6d are heaps better than the d810 despite the numbers.

[hjulenissen]

3. Yes a new and better body than the 7D would help, but unfortunately Canon isn't giving much to choose from.

My argument was that no-one seems to offer crop cameras with "significantly" better high-ISO performance than the 2009-vintage 7D. Everyone claims to do so, but when you look into the marketing, it tends to revolve around out-of-camera jpeg only (i.e. improved in-camera noise reduction) that should not matter to raw-shooters. Improving hardware (i.e. raw) performance at high ISO seems to be a lot harder.

Attached is a list of what I would consider top tier high ISO performers.  As you might guess, they are all Full Frame and the only Canon on the list is the 1Dx at the bottom.

Comparing systems of different sensor sizes is kind of mind-boggling, and the claimed "big-sensor-advantage" may or may not be relevant to real-world snapping where you have to pay for and carry your lenses, and where you might have constraints on DOF.

Both the 7D and 7DII are marginally outperformed by my D7100!  A list of APS-C cameras is attached and again dominated by Nikon.  (Note lists are only Nikon and Canon).  

The top crop performer according to dxolabs is the Nikon D5500 (ISO1438), while the Canon 7DII gets (ISO1082) and the 7D gets (ISO854).

If you look a bit closer at the graphs for SNR18% and (in particular) DR downscaled to 8MP, you'll see that the single "low-ISO" rating removes a lot of information about the sensors. The single most distinguishing feature of Canon sensors vs all others is the lack of DR at _low_ ISO (ISO800 and below). At high ISO, the 7DII seems to be at least on par with the D5500. The 7Dmk1 lags slightly behind (0.75 stop or something)
http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Nikon-D5500-versus-Canon-EOS-7D-Mark-II-versus-Canon-EOS-7D___998_977_619

Let us add some visuals (since this is a photography forum, afterall). The dxo rating seems to suggest that the Nikon camera has "tolerable" quality up to ISO1438, while the 7D does to ISO854. So at (manufacturer rated) ISO of 1600, the Nikon must beat the 6 years old 7D hands-down?

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d5500/8

I don't think that it does. In my view, the noise appears quite similar in that test, although the Nikon does seem to have slightly more detail. If I was to do low-light sports, I would be a lot more concerned about affording, supporting (and carrying) the right lenses, and getting focus right than these sensor differences.

-h

[NancyP]

What may have improved in the past several years is noise reduction algorithms used in the post processing software. I keep hearing that the DXO RAW converter has a computation-intensive heavy-duty noise algorithm in addition to the garden-variety quick noise algorithm, and that if you have a decent computer (or plenty of time) you can get amazing noise reduction that leaves Lr in the dust.

One of the things about the new 7D2 is an "anti-flicker" feature that synchs the shutter with the cycles of stadium lights of some types. It might be really useful for sports shooters.

Concerning Nikon APS-C cameras: 7100 has fine specs but a pitifully small buffer, 8 shots at best, apparently. I think the old 7D had 25 RAW shot buffer at 8/sec burst rate, and the 7D2 has 30 RAW shot buffer at 10 fps.

If I were a hobbyist sports shooter, I might upgrade my software first before switching systems and lenses.

[dwswager]

Honestly I would totally discount Dxomark sport / low light shooting values.

The 5d3 and 6d are heaps better than the d810 despite the numbers.

In my real world experience the D810 is about 1.5 - 2 stops better at high ISO especially considering the easier ability to pull clean detail from the shadows allows one to underexpose by 1-3 stops keeping the ISO down.  And all that even with the much smaller sensor well size disadvantage to the 5DmkIII.

I certainly wouldn't pick a camera based on a single amalgamized numerical rating, but they still have value in the overall process.

And Nancy, I generally use ACR to process and find Imogenetic Noiseware very good.  But I would like a better noise reduction capability within ACR or my RAW converter rather than having to do it on the rendered data.  Oh, and I can confirm the D7100 has a small buffer.  It usually doesn't bite me much though as my bursts tend to be 2-5 frames and it is usually the 1st or 2nd that gives me what I want.  While the D810 in crop mode has the same actual frame rate as the D7100, it is much faster and has a much larger buffer.

[robdickinson]

In my real world experience the D810 is about 1.5 - 2 stops better at high ISO especially considering the easier ability to pull clean detail from the shadows allows one to underexpose by 1-3 stops keeping the ISO down.  And all that even with the much smaller sensor well size disadvantage to the 5DmkIII.

You really think that if I shot my 6D at ISO 3200 that a D810 would be better at ISO 12800? Really?

I find the shadows on sony/nikon sensors murky at best and polluted by purple amp glow at worst. The colours very muted and poor.

But whatever works for you.

[dwswager]

You really think that if I shot my 6D at ISO 3200 that a D810 would be better at ISO 12800? Really?

I find the shadows on sony/nikon sensors murky at best and polluted by purple amp glow at worst. The colours very muted and poor.

But whatever works for you.

First let me realign my thinking.  The 6D is about a half stop better than the 5DmkIII.  The pattern noise is still there but seems somewhat less objectionable to on the 6D I'll revise to 1-1.5 stops.

1. No current DSLR sensor performs adequately amped to 12800 ISO.  I (almost) never shoot the D810 above 6400. 

2. At 20MP, the 6D is just too low resolution for me to use.  It is one of the reasons why I own the D810 instead of the D750. I don't own a 400mm f/2.8 and it would be a pain to shoot with that fixed focal length anyway except when shooting a specific player.  I can use the D7100 because it is crop sensor giving more reach.

3. I shoot say 1-3 stops under exposed and max the ISO to 6400.  You just can't do that on a Canon sensor.

4.  As to the shadows, yes if you shoot a Sony sensor amped too high and in some light conditions you will get purple amp glow.  But the ability to pull clean detail from the shadows because they do not exhibit the significant pattern noise of a Canon sensor means you don't have to shoot that way.  You skin the cat with better results shooting with under exposure.

5. Finally, everyone's results get skewed by the set of tools they know and use and their own ability.  I just started shooting night sports when I got the D810.  It made it possible.  Obviously, you can get away with quite a bit if the output is a local newspaper.  You just don't need great quality, but for a better paper or magazine or other mediums, I'll keep shooting my D810.  When Canon finally makes or buys a better sensor and outperforms the competition as they are currently getting outperformed, then I might be switching back to Canon.

[cengell]

Hello all, check out the Sony A77MII, very fast and really good tracking and AF speed! I Just got the Sony A 70-400 GII and the A77MII and I expect it to come close to my Canon 1Dx.

And you can take that Sony A 70-400 GII and with the Sony LA-AE4 adapter on a A6000 or A7r get SO MUST fast AF it's night and day!

If interested I can report back my findings.

My 2 cents.

Christopher