When you are shooting photographs from a football game, you need your lens to have a wide aperture, significant focal length, high image quality and potentially image stabilization. The aperture of a camera lens determines how much light hits the image sensor. The smaller the aperture number, the more light gets through. The focal length is measured in millimeters. Most people consider telephoto lenses to have a minimum focal length of 70 millimeters. Canon denotes its best lenses with an "L" in the name. These lenses are known for their high image quality. Canon also offers image stabilization on a number of its lenses, which helps minimize the blur caused by your hand shaking.
Canon 400 2.8 IS L
The Canon 400 2.8 L is one of the most used Canon lenses at football games. The 400 millimeter zoom allows you to get tight shots from across the field, and the 2.8 aperture helps you freeze the fast action of football plays. The lens also generates beautiful background blur to isolate your subject. However, the lens is also one of the most expensive made by Canon. According to the Canon website, the lens retails for about $8,000.
Canon 300 2.8 IS L
The Canon 300 2.8 IS L is very similar to the 400 2.8 IS L lens except the zoom is only 300 millimeters instead of 400 millimeters. The zoom on this lens, as well as the image quality, is still exceptional. The price tag is almost $4,900, according to Canon.
Canon 100-400 4.5-5.6 IS L
The 100-400 4.5-5.6 IS L lens offers a wide range of focal lengths that allows you to adjust to compose the image to your liking. Though the image quality still exceeds non-L lenses, the aperture is significantly smaller than the 2.8 aperture offered by most of the top lenses, which can make shooting night games more difficult. This lens uses a linear extension zoom instead of the ring zoom adjustment found on most Canon lenses, meaning you must physically lengthen or compress the lens to change the focal length. The lens retails for about $1,800.
Canon 70-200 2.8 IS L
The Canon 70-200 2.8 IS L is one of the most widely used lenses. Though it has a shorter maximum focal length, it is better for the closer shots and is often used in tandem with a Canon 400 2.8 IS L. This lens retails for about $2,000. If you want the longer focal length without paying several thousand dollars extra, consider getting the Canon 70-200 2.8 IS L and adding either a 1.4x or 2.0x extender to increase your focal length.
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