Overexposed softball shots

I shot softball for the first time yesterday using my 1D MarkIIN and 100-400L. All of the shots were of my friend's daughter who was pitching, and all of the shots came out needing about 1/2 stop negative exposure compensation to eliminate blown highlights.

The sun was strong and coming from just right of centerfield; I was shooting from just outside the batter's cage to the left of the batter. I was shooting with evaluative metering and using center point AF in Servo mode.

The compositions were relatively tightly cropped around the pitcher with the sun still above and not directly in the frame.

Q. When shooting backlit subjects like this is it normal to have to underexpose what the camera's metering suggests?

So overexposed that their are invisible?

Nelsonson wrote in post #3247617
So overexposed that their are invisible?

great first post.

When shooting backlit subjects, I always switch to spot metering. I try to force the camera to understand that YES the thing in the middle there is the important part. Go ahead and blow out the highlights of everything.

Give that a shot, see if it helps!

the best thing to do would be move to a new spot that's not backlit or shoot manual.