Getting ready for the tennis shoot. Here's the 400D fitted with the Tamron 500mm mirror lens. It's a very "stealth" combo and yet I can get 800mm eq. fov from it. The downside of this set up is obviously the manual focus and no IS (so I've thought). On the field my biggest problem was actually the lack of lighting. I was sitting pretty far away from the court. Even though the 800mm FOV is enough I need to shoot at 1/800 to keep things in check. At ISO 1600, 1/800, and f/8 (fixed for this lens) I was under by at least 3 stops or so. But the first rule in sports shooting is better noisy than blurry. I had to keep it at that.

The noise level is pretty bad, considering it's not the 400D's strength. Next time I would consider bringing my 5D, although I may have to crop a bit on the final image. FPS-wise they both are not great but acceptable for tennis. The best camera for the job? Probably anything but these two here :) I can image the 40D or D300 would do a very good job and the 1D Mark 3 or D3 would make this even easier. Oh, and I have to get better seats next time!