Lens Recommendation for Youth Football - EOS SL3

[Hippiegirl75]

Hi , I am new here and hope I can get some feedback. I am newer to photography and I do the photos for my sons youth football team games using my canon SL3. This season I have been asked if I would do the Team an Individual photos for each team in our league. Of course silly me said yes !! However I have run into a problem . I know how to stack the team to get them all into the shot however, I don't know which "somewhat" budget friendly lens I should be using. As I said I am fairly new to this so don't know all the in and outs so please be patient with me . I have tried practicing this type of shot (the team photo) with my nifty fifty , with my canon EFS 55-250mm with IS , with my canon EF 75-300mm and with my canon EFS 18-55 mm and and using an f stop 8 and 9 and shutter speed 1/125 and 1/80. On my screen everything looks perfect but when I put images on my computer they pictures aren't sharp and they are grainy . I don't have these issues when I'm doing their game photos but I'm really struggling with this team photo using the lenses that I have. This is volunteer work for youth sports and I just want to give them a really great team photo. I welcome any suggestions anyone out there in the photography world might have for a beginner such as myself. I should also mention I am using a tripod and the photos are being done outside on football field. Real Photo shoot is in a week ... Thank you Photography community

[jrhoffman75]

Can you post a few "problem" images in Dropbox or One Drive so we can examine? They would need to be images copied straight from the camera card.

[March411]

If you have decent light bump up your f stop a couple more stops as long as it doesn't impact your ISO. I would also use your EFS 18-55mm and get as close as possible to frame the group. 

[March411]

 @Hippiegirl75 This may also help. The Auto focus overview starts @ 1:44 minute mark.