Local Football - I struggle

[p3ryg]

So I am after a bit of critique/advice....
Every now and again I go and watch my sons local team on a Saturday and take the camera along, out of my comfort zone and tried on a few occasions but seems struggle with focus etc...
This Saturday armed with my Nikon D90 and Sigma 18-200 (I know old kit), I had another attempt and have posted 4 of the images on here, am I being to critical???
Kept the camera on Shutter mode with shutter above 1000....

These have been edited using Lightroom - the originals are to large..

 

[KTC]

So I think you need to work out whether you missed focus because your camera&lens is not focusing fast enough for your need & is still focusing when you're taking the shot, or whether you simply missed it and had the focus point on a different part of the picture than you wanted.

How are you focusing? Shutter button or back button? Single point? Continuous?

 

[p3ryg]

So I think you need to work out whether you missed focus because your camera&lens is not focusing fast enough for your need & is still focusing when you're taking the shot, or whether you simply missed it and had the focus point on a different part of the picture than you wanted.

How are you focusing? Shutter button or back button? Single point? Continuous?

Hi, I was using shutter button focus and on AF-C and on wide dynamic (?) which I believe uses 9 points around the centre point.

 

[sk66]

I would say that you are not being too critical at all...
Unfortunately, the size of these images makes it very hard for me to evaluate the images to say what I think may be the issue... the last one looks like the camera may have picked up focus on something behind the players.

 

[p3ryg]

I would say that you are not being too critical at all...
Unfortunately, the size of these images makes it very hard for me to evaluate the images to say what I think may be the issue... the last one looks like the camera may have picked up focus on something behind the players.

I could not load the originals as to large - I thought once clicked these pictures went full screen, but thank you for the advice.

 

[andrewc]

I think your lens is going to be the weakest part of the equation - these comparatively cheap super-zooms are not fast to focus and have a slow aperture which also affects the cameras ability to autofocus. In a gloomy winter, when the light is relatively poor, then its a double-whammy effect.

In terms of the shots, I'm not a football photographer, but I think the shots work best when the action is coming towards you, and is less satisfactory when its going away from you - eg the shot showing the goal.

 

[KTC]

Maybe give back button focus a try and see if you get better results? Unless you're great at holding the shutter half way, you're going to want to give your camera/lens time to get the focus before you take the shots you want.

 

[p3ryg]

Maybe give back button focus a try and see if you get better results? Unless you're great at holding the shutter half way, you're going to want to give your camera/lens time to get the focus before you take the shots you want.

Thank you so much for the back button focus tip....
Gave it a go yesterday and also went full manual to boot and got (in my humble opinion) much better results, came away a lot more positive with a lot more keepers, oh and my son scored a hat trick as well so even better.
Just trying to work out how to resize images and size then will add - think I may have reduced them a little much

 

[Bluesman graham]

Hi Perry.
A better set!, well done.
Exposure is a little bit erratic but given the sun it's no biggie.
Always use manual IMHO, it gives you so much control & if kept an eye on would have sorted out the last ones exposure.
The next thing to focus on is Horizons & framing.
I'm no expert & the framing is subjective, I have however, with your permission taken your 3 frames & added what I think would be a decent crop?
please feel free to ask me to remove them. A rule of thumb is in portrait mode cut into the action & try not to cut off limbs etc, in landscape, allow space passed the action for the ball to head to, not always possible & if not then a good shot is better than none!. Kind regards Graham.

P.s I can't do anything about the pixilation due to the uploaded sizes so quality wasn't a "work with" thing I'm afraid.

 

[p3ryg]

Hi Perry.
A better set!, well done.
Exposure is a little bit erratic but given the sun it's no biggie.
Always use manual IMHO, it gives you so much control & if kept an eye on would have sorted out the last ones exposure.
The next thing to focus on is Horizons & framing.
I'm no expert & the framing is subjective, I have however, with your permission taken your 3 frames & added what I think would be a decent crop?
please feel free to ask me to remove them. A rule of thumb is in portrait mode cut into the action & try not to cut off limbs etc, in landscape, allow space passed the action for the ball to head to, not always possible & if not then a good shot is better than none!. Kind regards Graham.

P.s I can't do anything about the pixilation due to the uploaded sizes so quality wasn't a "work with" thing I'm afraid.

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, your edits are exactly what I was after but wasn’t sure if I’d be cropping to much but not by the looks of your edits. Again processing is still something I’m learning so maybe over did that a bit as well.
Thank you again.