Football Pics

[joycemb]

I could use some help on what I'm doing wrong? Nearly 19 out 20 pics are blurry. I'm thinking my settings have to be wrong.

3200
800

[Dobick]

Let me see if I can shed some light on what settings you used through the exif info?

I am not sure what mode you used but your aperture was a constant 2.8 in all of the shots that I checked.

Your shutter speed is way too slow in all of the shots -- too slow for hand holding even.

it would appear that you missed the focus in all of them.

It also appears that all of these shots are shot at 800 ISO.

How to fix some of these problems...
first thing would be to bump the ISO as High as it will go -- not sure what that is on the 10d, as I never did own one (but I think 1600)
second would be to put your camera over on manual mode. You already know that you want your lens set to f/2.8, so that is decided (don't need the camera making that decision), you also know that you want to get at least 1/200 shutter speed (higher if possible but may not be) for handholding a 200mm lens (so no need to let the camera decide that setting either) Finally, you know that you want the camera set to as sensitive of an ISO as you can get (so no need for the camera to decide that one either. So now that you are in manual mode and don't have to worry about the metering, all you need to worry about is the focus. Make sure every shot is focused on something. Move your camera into AI servo focus mode and follow a player as if you were panning and fire off as many shots as you can get away with. If your shots come back way underexposed and you need to push them up in post processing, they will still look better than the blur that you are getting.

Keep shooting, and see if you can't find someone to shoot with during the daylight to try out a few things before tackling something as challenging as a night football game...

[Redneck]

Typical shutter speed issue. I shoot footbal at 1/500s or 1/640s.
How to achieve that? Open up your aperture to the max and shoot at high ISO (I usually shoot at ISO 1600 to 3200.

[Tom]

The 10D is crazy noisy at ISO 800 and above. You just have to deal with the noise.

For HS football, you really need 1/400th or higher shutter speed.

And you are probably going to be really underexposed at 1/400th F/2.8 and ISO 1600. Not much you can do about it.

[JohnT]

Deleted after reading other replies.

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Your shutter speeds are reading at 1/40th, one of them is at 1/13th!

Most people don't hand hold still shots at those shutter speeds.

If you can't shoot 1/500th minimum then decrease to 1/320 and pan with the action. You'll get better results (but slow shutter speeds take a lot of practice).

Good luck!

Joe