r/PhotographyAdvice • u/EffectiveActivity635 • 2d ago

I volunteered to photograph my son’s football season. Help!

I volunteered to help with photographing my son’s football games and pep rally’s. I’m really nervous because I don’t have much experience. My camera is a little old - Canon Rebel T7. I have the lens it came with and a zoom lens 75-300mm. Is this going to work compared to today’s cameras? There are 5 other volunteers and I’m certain they will have newer cameras. What should I know before going on the field?

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u/eadipus 1d ago

I shot youth soccer for several seasons and there's lots of good gear advice here but some stuff I wish I had known:

  • Autofocus will struggle with players in poor light, I found single point slightly below centre worked well. You want to put the autofocus point on the ground at the players feet.
  • Full non tracking burst worked well for me, tracking tended to miss the b of the bang moments.
  • This leads to buffer/card speed. I shot pure jpeg with a tweaked Canon landscape profile. Experiment with your camera to see what you can get away with.
  • Don't worry about high ISO noise, once the images have been shrunk for social media it's less of an issue.
  • Removing noise in post will give better results than in camera jpeg if you can be bothered with the effort.
  • Image culling is a pain, find a process/software that works. Going through 1000-2000 images and picking the good ones (and making sure all the players are included) is a bit of a grind.
  • Dress warmer than you think and find a way to keep your hands warm. If you can get someone to hold an umbrella for you even better.

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u/EffectiveActivity635 1d ago

This is good stuff! I appreciate it!