Kim,
Depending upon the school, IF you share your photographs with the team they may allow you to have access on the track or at least the fence that surrounds the track at most HS fields. It doesn't hurt to approach the AD and ask in order to acquire a better place for photography.
Some schools are very open to letting parents get on the sidelines which is generally a very bad idea because of the risk to photographers and the players and in recent years a lot of game officials put a stop to this because of people getting in their way. I have sidelines access from the school and the area conferences but I keep both eyes open while shooting and stay out of the way of everyone and I know most of the officials. I have had to jump out of the way more than once because plays often end far beyond the sideline. So stay aware of your surroundings no matter where you are shooting from!
I have used a Canon EF 800 f5.6 prime a few times to shoot part of a baseball game but in general a very long telephoto lens has limited use in sports and for football (and other night or indoor HS sports), a wide maximum aperture is very important. So better placement instead of a really long lens is going to be more practical and it also becomes more difficult trying to follow action with a long focal length lens. I often shoot soccer with a Canon 200-400 f4 with built in extender that makes it a 560mm f5.6 and tracking action is notably more challenging at 560; it isn't a stabilization issue because at the shutter speed you use for sports camera shake isn't a problem-the problem with a long lens is following a play where the point of action shifts well across the field in an instant such as going from QB release to pass reception/defensive play/interception because you lose your points of reference when trying to find the new point of action when using a lens setup with a limited field of view that is also of somewhat awkward size.
Location is always critical so if you can improve your access, that would be a great thing and then your 100-400 lens should do a good job. Attached photo from last week is sort of a worst case scenario because the football program was celebrating its 100 year anniversary at halftime with a large field ceremony at halftime and the school wanted some good high angle wide coverage photos. The place for that was in the "crow's nest" above the press box and getting there involves climbing a sketchy ladder straight up for quite a ways and it is surrounded by sort of a cage which does little for safety but makes climbing with camera gear a real challenge. So I left my twin shoulder harness with the 1DX III bodies and 70-200 and 400 f2.8 lenses in the press box on my way up. Because everything started immediately at end of half to fit it all in I had to get in place before the half ended so this photo was from up high using a 1DX II with EF 24-70 f2.8 glass. That is NOT the way I normally shoot football but it did provide an interesting angle/perspective.
The next photo shows this probably was a good spot to get an overview of the celebration but I also made a quick descent from my "nest" to catch the end of the anniversary celebration and captured some more normal shots including the last one of the current coaches talking with a head coach from many years ago.
So be creative and make the best of whatever angle you can get but try to get a little better access if possible!
Rodger
Thank you both, really appreciate all of your feedback and pictures!
Rodger I used to be on the field but the coach no longer allows it. I am the only photographer for the team and give all the pictures to all the other parents. I am the mom of the team captain and have been doing it for 2 years. The pictures are fine but small and when I zoom-in during editing sometimes it is too far and the faces get grainy. Here are a couple...
again thank you! Think I might buy that 1.4 x and look at the Sigma. Appreciate your help!
Too bad about the coach, usually it is the AD that sets the standard 😞
What shutter speed are you using? During daylight, you can usually get away with a lot of cropping because the ISO is so low that loss of detail due to noise isn't a concern. Of course once darkness falls, ISO related noise becomes an issue.
Here are a couple of images from last Friday with normal and tight crops, the first pair comes from pre-game warmup where 1/1600 shutter speed results in a nice low ISO 800 and severe cropping is possible. The second set is from late in the game where I have dropped shutter to my usual 1/1000 football game speed but the field lighting has pushed ISO to 10,000. The images, both typical crop and severe crop are both still usable but the severe crop starts to reveal more noise and loss of detail with the much higher ISO. On some fields I do have to let the camera go as high as ISO 25,600.
Rodger
