Quote: Originally Posted by NoNo (original)
Don't forget that with Nikons, there's a 1.5x zoom factor on the lens, so your lens is really 27-300.
I don't mean to jump on you here, NoNo, but it's not a "zoom factor", it's a "crop factor" (this is one of my biggest pet peeves when people talk about photography).
The lens isn't any more powerful with a crop factor body, you're just getting an equivalent field of view to a lens with 1.5 times more magnification. Curl your fingers and look through the hole; what you see through the hole isn't any bigger, but you're losing part of the picture because what your eye sees is more than what your hand lets through. It's actually the other way around with crop factor bodies; the sensor's smaller than the circle of light the lens projects, so what's "outside" the sensor is thrown away. This is particularly frustrating because a wide-angle lens is no longer really that wide angle.
Congrats on the new toy, Ian! I can't wait to see what kind of pictures you get, now.
I don't have any pics online currently, but I'm looking at a couple I took last year while karting with the Indy folks and even at ƒ/3.5 (wide open at 18mm on my lens) and 1/80 with ISO800 the karts were still not frozen. I could have gone to the max ISO1600 but those get pretty noisy on my camera. Zooming in reduces the light getting to the sensor, so you'll have to use a higher shutter, higher ISO, or bigger aperture. The lighting in a high school gym looks to be *much* brighter than what most karting places have, so it's still going to be tough to get good shots. And with the lens wide open, your focus will be very selective. It's all about the trade-offs!
