What's the best size (mm) for lenses for photographing sports?

Question

I read online that the best was 200 to 300 mm, but I was wondering if any other sizes could also work?

Answer 1

Any lense will work.  Longer is usually better with action photography because you can't always get close enough for a good shot without it.  

Much more important than the focal length however, is the speed of the lense.   This gets expensive, but get the fastest Telephoto lense you can afford.  The lower the F-stop, the quicker the lense.  

Aside from the obvious benefit of not blurring your shots, it also gives you greater depth of field, and lets you shoot in lower light.  The overall increase in versatility, will improve your shots, because it allows you to be more creative, or just lucky.  Either way, a great lense covers a multitude of sins, and makes the whole experience more satisfying.

Answer 2

You'll want to get a nice telephoto or zoom lens... 135mm+ is good for sports and wildlife. Usually, a 70-300mm or 100-400mm lens will work very well.

Answer 3

First Of All, " mm ' is not a size, it's a distance, it's a focal length in photography.

but, that's besides the point, when photographing sports, which focal length you needed would depend on how close you are to the action. If you generally close to the action, you should with a 70-300mm lens, you could get it VR or IS, as canon puts it. I would send you links, but you didn't mention which brand your camera was. However, if you're not that close to the game, you might need a SUPER TELEPHOTO lens, perhaps a 600mm or 1,000mm lens, which can cost thousands upon thousands of dollars. And these lenses are aimed towards the national geographic type photographer, where there's no limit for money. However i think that they 70-300mm lens, will be good enough for what you're trying to accomplish.

Answer 4

depends on how close to the field/court you will be. if you can be at the edge, those would be fine, the further away you are might might be better off with a 300 or more

outdoor sports and you have alot of sunlight hopefully, but if your gonna be indoors, you probably want to get a "fast" lens, an F/2.8 or if money is no option an F/1.4. This lets in more light and gives you a faster shutter speed to freeze the pic so you dont have blurry shots

if you get somethin F/4, outdoors should be ok, but indoors can be iffy

if you have a Canon, check out their "L" lenses, VERY high quality and usually have wide apertures