Would some of you share with me which lens you use the most in your pet photography both in the studio and out?

Also, Mr. Ramey, in a previous post you commented on the Nikon 300 f/4. Is that a lens you would still recommend and was it for wildlife/bird photography?

Thank you.

Lucy,
for me there's no question: I use the Canon 17-55 F2.8 IS almost 90% of the time both in the studio and on location for pet portraits. The other 10% is divided equally between my 50mm F1.4 and the 85mm F1.8. The 17-55 is also my show formal lens.

For action photography, it's the 70-200mm F4L especially outdoors. Indoors, I go to the 85 for action stuff depending on how close I can get to the action.

Hope that helps.

Jim

I use a 16-85mm lens for studio, group, & title shots. For outdoor, I use 80-200mmf/2.8 for almost all of my agility work and the 300mmf/4 is my Bird in Flight lens, large mammal lens, etc. For numbers of photos, the 80-200mm is my most used lens, followed by my 300mmf/4, followed by my 16-85mm, followed by my manual focus 28mm/2, followed by my manual focus 55mmf/2.8 macro lens.

for portraits I use the Nikon 24-70 in tight indoor spaces.
The 70-200 f2.8 for outdoor portraits.
85 f1.4 for indoor dog sports, but I've got a 200 f2 on the way.

Outdoor dog sports are handled with the 200-400 f2.8 and the 70-300 f5.6 save for herding trials with long runs. Those get the 600 f4.

Portraits in Studio: 24-105mm F4 IS
Portraits Outdoors: 70-200mm F4
Events / Low light: 50mm 1.4
Wildlife / Birds : 100-400mm IS

I shoot full frame but carry a crop body as backup or to get more reach.

Thank you for all the helpful information. I attempted one time to shoot agility (for practice only) indoors and found I could not get the exposure correct. I was shooting with the 70-200 2.8, but could not seem to get good pictures. Also, it was my first time trying to shoot in that type of environment. May I ask what ISO is used mostly in that type of situation?

Also, would someone be kind enough to tell me what a "crop body" is?

L

The ISO you need really depends on the lighting in the venue, the aperture of your lens and how fast you need your shutter speed to be.

One place I worked recently required ISO 3200 with an 85mm and using aperture settings from 1.4-2.0, while the place I'll shoot this weekend will require ISO 6400 and I still won't get a shutter of 1/500.

A crop body refers to the sensor size. Full frame (FX) like the D3 and D700 or Cropped (DX) like the D300 and most others. A smaller sensor gives you the appearance (Illusion really as it amounts to little more than a digital zoom - but that is way over simplified of course) of more reach because it will give an effective focal length multiplied by the crop factor.

It has to do with the size of the sensor. Full frame dSLRs have a sensor the size of 35mm film. We refer to a smaller sensor (like the common APS-C sized ones) as a cropped sensor or cropped body. It is important to note when talking about lenses because the cropped bodies have the effect of increasing the focal length of the lens. On a Canon 40D (which has a 1.6x crop factor) the effect is to give a 50mm lens a cropped view that is similar to a focal length of (50mm x 1.6) 80mm on a full frame camera.

It is better explained here: http://www.millhouse.nl/digitalcropfactorframe.html

Lucy, you probably need to shoot in manual to get the correct exposure indoors. As far as what ISO, it depends on how much light there is. You really need to have about 1/400th of a second to get a sharp shot. Open your lens up as far as it will go, meter it on something that is fairly close to grey and set your manual exposure(ISO/shutter speed/aperture) where you want it to be and where it says you have a proper exposure.

Most of the time in places like that I am at 1600+ to get the exposure I want

With the high ISO's, how do you prevent noise or is that an issue?

Thanks for the web site explaing the crop. It was quite surprising to see the differences.

L