Tomorrow plan...

[js6198]

Well, tomorrow's my daughters last U10 soccer game. Everyone will want to see them on the teams website. Forcast calls for a mostly cloudy day:evil:. My plan is to shoot Tv al servo, take a couple of practice shots bumping up the ISO setting the shutter at around 1000 and use a monopod. Now here's where I get confused: should I go AWB or set it the "cloudy" balance? and how should my metering be, center?, partial? I have a consumer 5.6 100mm-300mm 6 year old lens on a XTI:cry:. I'm going to try and be patient and avoid the "far away" shots, position myself to avoid a "noisy" background and keep my fingers crossed. Any other helpful hints will be appreciated. Oh, and one more thing is I have to remember to charge both batteries, which I've learned the hard way:oops:
Thanks
Jim

[primoz]

Believe it or not, for shooting sport, cloudy weather is perfect weather. As far as other question goes... use custom wb. Take wb from white piece of paper and use it to set custom wb. It works best way. For shutters around 1/1000 you don't need monopod. And you don't really need to go all that fast... 1/500 or 1/640 will be fast enough already. As far as metering and settings goes. Go with manual, take photo of player on field and dial your shutter time so, that face will be lit right way while keeping lens wide open (f5.6 for your lens). Then set iso, so you get times around previous mentioned 1/500 or 1/640 and you are done :) With cloudy weather, you won't have problems with that.
What else? Nothing except good luck :)

[royv]

Basicly nothing to add to primoz's post, he knows how to shoot sports.

One thing to keep in mind though; try to vary your shooting perspective. Try getting low some times and perhaps turn the camera for a diagonal horizon.

[js6198]

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and will post a couple of the results....maybe;)
Jim

[ust82gopher]

Well, tomorrow's my daughters last U10 soccer game. Everyone will want to see them on the teams website. Forcast calls for a mostly cloudy day:evil:. My plan is to shoot Tv al servo, take a couple of practice shots bumping up the ISO setting the shutter at around 1000 and use a monopod.

I like all that. I usually don't need a monopod with my 70-200 2.8 L IS.

Now here's where I get confused: should I go AWB or set it the "cloudy" balance? and how should my metering be, center?, partial? I have a consumer 5.6 100mm-300mm 6 year old lens on a XTI:cry:.You know, it's a matter of how important this is for you. I typically shoot RAW, center auto focus, partial metering, with AWB, and high (H) continuous shot. But if I don't like the White Balance, it's a quick fix with the RAW converter. The downside is, I purchased several 8 GB compact flash cards to have enough capacity to do a HS game.

For u10's, I don't think it is all that important. (Your SLR photos will still blow away the P&S ones). So, I would shoot AWB, Large JPEG. I don't think you will be all that disappointed.[/quote]

I'm going to try and be patient and avoid the "far away" shots, position myself to avoid a "noisy" background and keep my fingers crossed. Any other helpful hints will be appreciated. Oh, and one more thing is I have to remember to charge both batteries, which I've learned the hard way:oops:
Thanks
JimWith large JPEG files, you will be amazed at how well you can still crop those "far away shots" into something that still has plenty of pixels for a good web photo.

I usually watch the first 10 minutes of the game to get a feel for who the key players / key positions are. Then, I typically follow a single player, waiting for the action to come to him/her. Once I get that shot, I pick another player - and so on. Seems to work well for me.

Tim

[In2Photos]

Believe it or not, for shooting sport, cloudy weather is perfect weather. As far as other question goes... use custom wb. Take wb from white piece of paper and use it to set custom wb. It works best way. For shutters around 1/1000 you don't need monopod. And you don't really need to go all that fast... 1/500 or 1/640 will be fast enough already. As far as metering and settings goes. Go with manual, take photo of player on field and dial your shutter time so, that face will be lit right way while keeping lens wide open (f5.6 for your lens). Then set iso, so you get times around previous mentioned 1/500 or 1/640 and you are done :) With cloudy weather, you won't have problems with that.
What else? Nothing except good luck :)
I definitely agree with all that. The nice even lighting is great. Some of my best shots were during cloudy days. Here is one of my favorites, although not an action shot (Click for EXIF).

http://www.mdsportsphoto.com/photos/214854491-L-1.jpg (http://www.mdsportsphoto.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=214854491)

[js26198]

Well, I tried and today's pictures were a complete disaster. I just couldn't seem to get anything in focus. Tried AF then manual. It was much more sunny than what the weather man had predicted. These are a couple of the best out of the batch, and even these are bad:(
Jim

[nicmo]

Jim, sorry you had a rough shoot today. I have had my fair share of those myself...;)

A couple of suggestions from looking at your EXIF data. Your shutter speed was way to slow at 1/250 you should be around 1/500 at the slowest. Your Aperture was at 7.1, you may want to try shooting in AV mode and open up your lens to its fastest (f/5.6) and work the ISO to get you the higher shutter speed.

As for your focusing issue, I would suggest using AI Servo and back button focusing. This takes a bit getting use to, but once you get it down you'll never know how you lived without it.

Keep shooting!

[primoz]

I'm not trying to be rude or anything but...
...while keeping lens wide open (f5.6 for your lens). Then set iso, so you get times around previous mentioned 1/500 or 1/640 and you are done
Especially right photo is kinda sharp, but has lot of motion blur, which is perfectly normal for 1/250. I completely agree, you go out and want to try your own way. But if you are asking for suggestions here, take at least few shoots that way, people suggested. Football match lasts 2 times 90 minutes so you have more then enough time to try one way and the other way, especially when you see your way doesn't really work. You might actually learn something this way, and people won't think, it's complete waste of their time to give you tips, if you forget about that next second you close computer.