No BS Method to get Sharp Sports Photographs on EOS R5

[Zhaopian]

Hi,

I have an R5 with a RF 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. I also have an RF 100-500mm F/4.5 lens. Firmware is 2.0.0. Camera itself was purchased in June 2024.

I've been photographing flag football on a high school field for several weeks. While I' close to getting sharp images, I want to know what more could or should I be doing.

You can see my settings in the attached picture. Also, I use number 3 image stabilization setting on the lens with IBIS off, and last weekend I had a good success rate with Single Shooting Drive (as counterintuitive as that may seem for sports).

Can't do anything about the stadium light, so once the sun goes down, I'm definitely at F/2.8 and auto-ISO. I had pretty good luck with 1/1000 give or take a stop or two. I hand-hold and try to remain steady. I've tried a mono-pod with the 100-500mm especially at the 350mm and up range.

Other than lots more practice, what else can I do. Also, I seem to notice that I probably need to get better at aiming my focus point on the actual subject, so there is that issue too.

Thanks.

[wq9nsc · Accepted solution]

Your exposure settings look reasonable to me and the 70-200 f2.8 is an exceptional lens for sports,  I use a pair of 1DX III bodies for football with an EF 400 f2.8 on one and a 70-200 f2.8 on the other with pretty much the same exposure setup except I stay with 1/1000 for night games.  Aperture is wide open with ISO set to auto and metering to partial.

I am not sure how the AF Case numbers with your R5 correspond to those of my 1DX III.  Case 4 with the 1DX III is for subjects that accelerate or de-accelerate quickly and that is the case that I use for football and soccer which works very well.  If Case 2 is the same on the R5 as it is with the 1DX III, then it isn't a good choice for sports like football.

With the lenses I use and the 1DX III, focus acquisition is very fast so I have focus vs shot priority set to balanced.  If your initial shot in a sequence where you have to quickly jump to a subject is in soft focus (i.e. switching instantly from passer to receiver), then consider changing that balance to focus priority for the INITIAL image.  But balanced is probably the right choice.

Head/eye detection is "cool" but it isn't that useful in many sport situations because you have multiple "targets" in frame and you need to choose the target that is important.  I use single point with expansion to four with the selection area near the center of the array, that varies slightly by sport and is really a matter of what works best for you.

1/800 is pretty much the minimum and I made the decision to never drop below 1/1000 when I switched to 1DX II bodies several years ago and that is even more the case with my III series bodies.  Sensor performance and post-processing noise reduction is good enough that I regularly let ISO go to 25,600 without concern and higher is certainly acceptable.

Auto white priority is your best friend when shooting under typically weird less than D1/pro stadium lighting.  It will get you close and then you can fine tune color temp if you wish.

Check your noise reduction settings in post because default often is biased towards maximum noise reduction in order to reduce any sign of noise but the trade-off is some softening.  Check and find the level that you like and DON'T fall victim to "pixel peeping" looking for noise while completely losing sight of what the photo actually conveys.  There is far too much of that going on with a concern for technical perfection while losing "focus" on the key point that your image is actually conveying a thought or telling a story. 

Post some of your photos so we can better see what you are seeing and make sure you balance technical perfection with equal concern for capturing what is important. 

Friday night I was running down the sideline dodging players to keep up with this surprise pass and run series of images in the Smugmug link below.   I wasn't in perfect position and I wasn't worried about technical perfection while running and capturing images with a 1DX III with 70-200 f2.8 while my other 1DX III with the big EF 400 2.8 was hanging on my my dual shoulder harness 🙂  But I think the player is very happy I captured this TD play regardless of any shortcomings. 

Canon's 1DX III and EF 70-200 f2.8 did their job superbly making it easy for me to do my part.

https://rodgersingley.smugmug.com/TJ-Larson/n-F2mpsb

Rodger

[wq9nsc · Accepted solution]

Your exposure settings look reasonable to me and the 70-200 f2.8 is an exceptional lens for sports,  I use a pair of 1DX III bodies for football with an EF 400 f2.8 on one and a 70-200 f2.8 on the other with pretty much the same exposure setup except I stay with 1/1000 for night games.  Aperture is wide open with ISO set to auto and metering to partial.

I am not sure how the AF Case numbers with your R5 correspond to those of my 1DX III.  Case 4 with the 1DX III is for subjects that accelerate or de-accelerate quickly and that is the case that I use for football and soccer which works very well.  If Case 2 is the same on the R5 as it is with the 1DX III, then it isn't a good choice for sports like football.

With the lenses I use and the 1DX III, focus acquisition is very fast so I have focus vs shot priority set to balanced.  If your initial shot in a sequence where you have to quickly jump to a subject is in soft focus (i.e. switching instantly from passer to receiver), then consider changing that balance to focus priority for the INITIAL image.  But balanced is probably the right choice.

Head/eye detection is "cool" but it isn't that useful in many sport situations because you have multiple "targets" in frame and you need to choose the target that is important.  I use single point with expansion to four with the selection area near the center of the array, that varies slightly by sport and is really a matter of what works best for you.

1/800 is pretty much the minimum and I made the decision to never drop below 1/1000 when I switched to 1DX II bodies several years ago and that is even more the case with my III series bodies.  Sensor performance and post-processing noise reduction is good enough that I regularly let ISO go to 25,600 without concern and higher is certainly acceptable.

Auto white priority is your best friend when shooting under typically weird less than D1/pro stadium lighting.  It will get you close and then you can fine tune color temp if you wish.

Check your noise reduction settings in post because default often is biased towards maximum noise reduction in order to reduce any sign of noise but the trade-off is some softening.  Check and find the level that you like and DON'T fall victim to "pixel peeping" looking for noise while completely losing sight of what the photo actually conveys.  There is far too much of that going on with a concern for technical perfection while losing "focus" on the key point that your image is actually conveying a thought or telling a story. 

Post some of your photos so we can better see what you are seeing and make sure you balance technical perfection with equal concern for capturing what is important. 

Friday night I was running down the sideline dodging players to keep up with this surprise pass and run series of images in the Smugmug link below.   I wasn't in perfect position and I wasn't worried about technical perfection while running and capturing images with a 1DX III with 70-200 f2.8 while my other 1DX III with the big EF 400 2.8 was hanging on my my dual shoulder harness 🙂  But I think the player is very happy I captured this TD play regardless of any shortcomings. 

Canon's 1DX III and EF 70-200 f2.8 did their job superbly making it easy for me to do my part.

https://rodgersingley.smugmug.com/TJ-Larson/n-F2mpsb

Rodger

[Zhaopian]

Your photos are amazing. I made the adjustments you recommended, but I want to show you a picture I took before I read your response. I think what I'm trying to ask is, if my daytime image meets the industry standard. I was pleasantly pleased with the results of the daytime game shot--other than composition, decisive moment, peak action, etc, but I think it does show what 1/2000 shutter and low ISO can do in late afternoon sunlight.

[p4pictures · Accepted solution]

I'm going to assume that you are shooting JPG here so that you have faster delivery times after the game. I noticed a few settings in your camera to do with the in-camera processing that you might want to consider changing. If you are shooting and processing RAW images, then the choice of software used for processing may be another factor.

First you have high ISO noise reduction set to strong, this does help to moderate the noise, but it does so by  reducing detail in the images, and sometimes this means images just don't look sharp. Secondly you appear to have tried to maximise sharpness and clarity to try and pull detail from the softer results of high ISO noise reduction. 

• I suggest reducing the High ISO noise reduction to standard.
• Reduce clarity to +2 at most.
• Your current customised Fine Detail picture style is configured with unusual sharpening parameters, strength 7, fineness 5 and threshold 5. Change this to strength 6, fineness 3 and threshold 2. Your current setting for 5 in the threshold means that there needs to be very clear edge to for the sharpening to apply, in effect the high value here weakens the sharpening effect set by the amount and fineness. 

One experiment you can try is to shoot a handful of images in RAW or RAW + JPG. Then from the camera play back menu, select RAW image processing. This will enable you to create a new JPG from the RAW file, but critically you can change settings for high ISO noise reduction, sharpening and clarity. It's a good way to compare the same image with different camera settings. 

[Zhaopian]

Actually, I shoot everything in RAW and stopped JPEG because I'm just practicing. I considered the possibility that the SD card, even though it's the faster kind, constrained the recording time of my CF Express when shooting in burst.

Oddly enough I noticed that in many photos, the focus point is as blurry if not more blurry than some areas outside the focus zone.

The above image was cropped with screen shot to keep the image size little for this site, so the player to the ref's left is actually sharper in the original image. But how does this happen? I was shooting single shot--to see if I could get sharper images--and was panning, probably. But also had it on face tracking, which seems unnecessary if the camera cannot comprehend a helmet.