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KeithB
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Just to relate some experiences I just had using my Rebel Xt and 70-300 IS at the circus last weekend. (This kind of relates to the recent discussion about gymnastics.)
My wife is a pre-school teacher and likes to have "themes" since her current theme is the circus, we went to the Ringling Brother's circus at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday the 20th.
She wanted some photos to show the class, and since she doesn't think I know what she wants, she was in charge of the camera. I had the camera set to "P" mode with the ISO set to 1600. I shot High Resolution JPEGS.
She took about 300 shots (over the period of about 3 hours) changing our card about halfway through.
In general we were really pleased at the results. The exposure - even with some very black backgrounds - tended to be OK and the White Balance seemed to be generally spot on. The IS worked really well, too, since this was all hand held. The shutter speed was fast enough to actually stop the action - even with the galloping horses. (I think my wife was kind of naturally panning during this - even though the IS was in mode one, it did not seem to get in the way. )There were some blurry shots of course, but there were more keepers than rejects.
The only real problem was that occasionally the Autofocus would hunt when there was nothing at one of the autofocus points. If it had been a prime I could have locked the focus at infinity, but I don't think that will work very well zooming from 70 - 300 mm. (My wife does not yet get the whole press the button half way down thing - and generally it is not really needed.)
We were about 18 rows up from the ring and the 70-300 seemed to be about the ideal focal length for what we were trying to get - It was wide enough to get most of the whole ring at 70 mm, and zoomed in pretty close on the action at 300 mm.
To sum up, I was really pleased with the results we got in a pretty difficult shooting situation. I remember my first time shooting a concert with a manual (with exposure indication) SLR and 50 mm lens, and I seriously overexposed the subject because the black background seriously biased the camera's exposure meter.
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