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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T-Man" data-source="post: 479959" data-attributes="member: 22038">Hi, John --That Tamron 70-200 Di VC f/2.8 is an outstanding lens! I don't own one, but know someone who does and have seen lots of photos taken with it. It's very sharp and the VC works well. I usually prefer Nikon lenses in most configs, but this is one case where I'd pick the Tamron over the Nikon.I'm interested in this topic because I was in your exact situation last fall. My daughter was a member of her HS marching band last year (she just graduated), and I was asked to take photos throughout the season for use in a video presentation for their annual banquet. I used my Nikon 70-200 f/4G ED VR lens on my D800, and was pretty happy with the results I got. It's a much lighter and shorter lens than the f/2.8 versions of the same zoom range, which is certainly more convenient for handheld shots from up in the stands at a game. Depending on how much light was provided at the various stadiums, I was usually able to stay within ISO 400 - 800 at f/4 and still get decent shutter speed to stop action. In the worst lighting situations, further into the season where it got darker earlier, and in bad weather, I had to occasionally bump ISO up to 1600. There were very few situations where I wished I had shallower DOF than what f/4 provided, because the task at hand more often than not involved getting photos of multiple kids at varying distances in the same frame, and f/4 worked fine for those situations where I was taking candid shots of individual kids. The 70-200 f/4's outstanding VR also had a lot to do with me being able to keep ISO relatively low. I wished it had a tad more reach for some of the individual shots than what I got on the FX sensor, but many shots involved getting the whole band or most of the band in the same frame to show their marching formations, so it was just fine for the latter. That won't be as much of an issue on your D7100, though.Having said all that, the f/2.8 lens would have certainly allowed me to use lower ISO on average. Nevertheless, with the D800's excellent noise suppression combined with the excellent noise elimination of NIK's Define 2.0 software, I got some nice, relatively noise-free results on my ISO 1600 shots. So, all things considered, even if I had both f/2.8 and f/4 lenses, I would've still selected the lighter, more convenient form factor f/4 lens for this specific application even though I'd rather have the f/2.8 lens overall for its greater versatility. Outside of this, the f/2.8 lens will of course give you more versatility, better speed, better light transmission, and better subject isolation long-term. Just food for thought.</blockquote>

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