Football/Soccer Tips please

[boydE]

HI

I have just bought myself a IXUS 500 or S500 to the US.
My son plays football, I want to take some action photos of him playing football.

Assuming its a nice day

What settings would I use to capture nice shots?
Do I zoom in or do I use PC software to crop etc....

The camera is 5mp 3 optical zoom 12 combined

[GMosher]

Don't use the digital zoom....that much I CAN tell you.
Get as close as physically possible....try to shoot with a fast shutter speed...allthough I don't know how well the S500 handles higher ISO's. The best thing you can do honestly is go out and shoot, and shoot, and shoot.... ALWAYS..ALWAYS shoot at the highest possible res so that when cropping you don't lose as much quality.

Most important thing to do while you're out there is to have fun, and not get discouraged if you don't get what you're after the first few times out. What do you typically shoot?

[PhotosGuy]

Get as close as physically possible....try to shoot with a fast shutter speed... TRUTH! Here's some of my first attempts, along with comments on what I learned. The top pic is a 5% crop of a 150mm shot from about 200' away. Wish I'd had a 400mm 2.8!!! ;)
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75062