It has been a while.
Ok, it has been quite a while since my last update. I've had a ton of fun playing with my Kr and I try to learn something new almost every day. I think I've come a long way but there is still sooooo much to learn. As for my quest for sub-$1000 hockey photos... well, I'm pretty happy with what I was able to get with the kit 55-300 lens as long as I was very careful to find clean spots of glass to shoot through and slow the shutter speed a little and work to track the action. All in all, I have several shots of every kid on our teams and while there's nothing anyone is going to make a fathead out of, there's some nice memories captured for our sons' teams.
That said, I rented a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 from
CameraLensRentals.com this month and WOW! I'm not sure I'll be able to return it! The focus is crazy fast and in the rare instance it hunts, it's back to spot on focus in the blink of an eye! Not to mention, it's so quite... makes my 55-300 sound like its gasoline powered by comparison. Anyway, the extra boost in aperture and the crazy fast focus has me concentrating a lot more on composition. I still yield about 10-15% "keepers" from a game but I find myself enjoying the game more since I'm spending less time anticipating the action and letting the camera/lens combo do more of the work. Not to mention, the resulting images are better. I can use faster shutter speeds to freeze the action better and/or lower ISO to get less noise and more clarity.
So, in summary, the Kr with the 55-300 kit lens was perfect choice to start out with and I don't regret my decision even a little bit. It works well, but for those really special shots that a parent might want to frame up, there's just no getting around the need for faster glass. However, given the price of the 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses, a budget conscious hockey parent could pick a month or two each season where there's playoffs or lots of games and rent for several seasons.
Side note: The people at the rental place went above and beyond to get the lens to me early when my older son's team made districts and suddenly had a stretch of 5 game days in a row. Also, if you rent one of these beasts, consider a monopod... I didn't and with 2 games a day for a few days my arms felt like I was out there playing
Oh yeah, here's a couple of pics with the Sigma: