Post your 2019 Football!!

I guess its that time of the year for a football thread. Did not find one on a quick search, so here it is. If there was already a thread started please direct me to it...

Please share all your football pics this season. Things like age, gender, skill level, etc...do not matter. Basically no limits, games or practice, high school or flag league, amateur or pro. Anything football, except futbol.

Here are a few from practice last week. Heading to my first preseason game tonight, so might add a couple later.

The first one is what happens to some players as they arrive at training camp.

The second one is literally a "once a year" opportunity. Roethlisberger takes a few long snaps, needless to say the kicker's foot didn't get anywhere near his hand.

49ers vs Cowboys pre-season.

Thanks for sharing. I must admit, it's "preseason" for me as well...… I have to get out of baseball mode, switch to football.

Here are a couple from Saturday. I heard on sports radio on the way into the city that Mahomes would be playing the entire first half, the radio hosts were a little shocked by this. He ended up playing 1 or 2 series.

The second shot is Terrell Edmunds coming in from behind to knock the ball loose, we were able to recover. It's a heavy crop because I left the 400mm F/5.6 home.

A few from preseason practice.

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Wondering if you football photographers could give some advice to an amateur.....I'll be shooting some high school games for the first time & I could use some general tips (do's/don'ts). When the sun is still shining, I'm good....it's when low light creeps in that I'm concerned about image quality. I have a 5D3 with Canon 70-200 2.8.

Thanks in advance.

A sharp, fast lens and a relatively new FF body, you shouldn't have much problem. You might run into some poorly lit stadiums, jumping your ISO up even more. You have to keep your shutter speed up because it's a lot better to deal with some extra noise than motion blur. I try not to go below 1/1250 sec but sometimes you have to push the limits. You will have to do tests on sight when it comes to WB because every stadium is different. I usually shoot auto WB then fix later. I sometimes shoot at a stadium where a few lights actually have a different color temperature than the rest of lights.....

Accessibility is a big thing also, are you able to shoot from the sidelines? Feel free to ask any specific questions you may have, there are many folks here that know what they are doing.

Great set, really like the combat catch pic.

Pigpen101 wrote in post #18913474
Great set, really like the combat catch pic.

Thanks.

sosaysmorvant wrote in post #18913449
Wondering if you football photographers could give some advice to an amateur.....I'll be shooting some high school games for the first time & I could use some general tips (do's/don'ts). When the sun is still shining, I'm good....it's when low light creeps in that I'm concerned about image quality. I have a 5D3 with Canon 70-200 2.8.

Thanks in advance.

Here is my opinion for what is worth. You probably know most of this already.

Use AI servo. For focus points us a single point or a single point expanded, no zone focus. Use high speed continous and not single shot. I like to shoot manual settings with Auto ISO and auto white balance. I try not to go under 1/1000 sec and keep the aperture wide open at f/2.8. Don't be scared of noise at the higher ISO. In the words of Peter Reid Miller, who used to shoot for Sports Illustrated, you would rather have a sharp image with some noise than one with less noise but motion blur. You can fix a lot of noise in post processing but you can't fix motion blur. Wait for the action to come close to you and try to fill the frame the best you can. The less cropping you have to do with low light photos the less the noise will be apparent. And as mentioned above, you will probably have to just white balance due to the lighting at high school fields. Especially if the lighting cycles or flickers. I don't think your camera has a anti-flicker setting like the 7D2 or 1Dx2 do.

That is the best I can advise with my limited knowledge of sports photography. There are pros out there that know a hell of a lot more than I do or ever will.

Doc

Thanks for the advice! I will have sideline access, so I'm bound to get a few good shots each game.

How high do you all push the ISO?

I'm not as good as some of the others, but I'm comfortable even with my 70D pushing the ISO to 6400 and I'm even fine with 12800 most of the time.

Now that sounds crazy to some and I would prefer not to, but some smaller high schools just have awful lights and I can't get a high enough SS without going that high. I've also found that with a little post processing in LR the noise in those high ISO shots aren't too bad.

I'd echo what Doc said, I'll bump the ISO and deal with the noise before motion blur. With your FF and 70-200, I don't think you'll have much trouble as far as image quality. Just wait for them and let them fill up the frame.

As high as you have to, as low as you can.

I did not mention Al SERVO only because it might be to much info at first. You will have to go into your camera settings and make some adjustment for Al SERVO, it may seem like much at first but it's not bad once you get into it.

The adjustments (settings) you may want to play with are: Tracking sensitivity, choice of priority between shutter release or achieving focus on 1st & 2nd images, & the acceleration & deceleration of tracking. Using the single, center focus point is another good point mentioned by Doc that I forgot to mention, as well as high speed shutter. If time and memory space are plenty, then you can always shoot RAW for much more control. Sports are the only thing I don't shoot RAW. First, I don't want to deal with buffer speed & time it takes to right to card, then download onto hard drive, & again load time for opening in programs. Secondly, I shoot for a newspaper & need to limit the amount of PP work I do on an image, so I don't need that much leeway.

I have 1 tip for shooting in AL SERVO. Get in as tight as you can on you subject. It's much easier to keep that single focus point on your subject when he is prominent in the frame. This helps lower the chances of the focusing point switching to another player that just showed up in the area.

We know what you'll be doing in the next couple of weeks so we hope to see some of your shots here!

Thunderstorm cancels my season opener. First game is postponed until tomorrow.

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We made up until half time.... then game suspended due to lightning. The good news we were up 44 -7... don't think the other team is in a hurry to play the second half. Makes me worry our guys will take this "win" a little to seriously and think they are rally that good. Next week agains Cardinal Gibbons will tell.

Nice field...

First HS scrimmage of the year for me. Got some adjusting to do with the new gear but liking the results of a few images.