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Well, I'm a sucker for punishment. I've been using the oft-discussed Nikkor 70-300G for the last couple of days on the weekend.. Yesterday at the zoo (more pics later, when I could be bothered PPing), and today at the footy. These were all taken from ground level (front row, on the fence) during the reserves game at the Sydney v Port Adelaide match.. I believe it is the Swans reserves vs Queanbeyan.

Didn't bother taking pics during the main game, good thing too, I might have sent a D70s-shaped missile in the general direction of the players, they were that inept.

Anyhoo. These are some of the better ones, out of a pretty horrible bunch. Mostly 1/1000 or 1/800, f/8, ISO400. The rule of thumb is that the better the composition /shot, the more likely you are to focus on the seating behind the players.

I found I could get "okay" results by doing a bit of cropping/resizing/USM PP on the few specimens that were vaguely in focus. A bit noisy due to the ISO and PP, but what can ya do?

Would love to hear from experienced sports shooters, and any suggestions.

ps: "Get a 70-200VR" is not a helpful suggestion. I'm working on it, ok???

behold the power!

It looks like you were a long way from the action. Close crops?

Can you post a resized full frame shot for us to compare please?

Will do so, later tonight. They are reasonably tight crops from centre of frame, the most extreme is #2, which is almost a 100% crop. The others are more of a 200% crop. Or should that be 50% crop. Can't work it out

Couple of questions - why not shoot at ISO 200? It looks like there was plenty of available light so fast shutter speeds should have been easily achievable at the lowest ISO.

Were you using autofocus? If so, were you using AF-S or AF-C? AF-C would have allowed you to follow and keep in focus a specific subject regardless of its movement, provided you keep the chosen focus bracket over the subject. (Any of the focus brackets will do this but the centre one has a slightly wider range and so is the best one to use).

Some answers for you both

My normal seats at the SCG are up high, but for the photos I posted, I sat right on the fence for about 15 mins. For most of that time, a lot of the action was on the other side of the ground though - one thing I've learnt is that players will tend to face inward towards the centre of the ground, so your best chance of getting a shot of the front of a player is from the opposite side of the ground! Otherwise, park yourself behind the goals/tryline as that is where they will run. For these shots, I was on the wing.

Manta, I was shooting at f/8 because the 70-300G is unacceptably soft wide open at 300mm. It's marginally better at f/8 Combined with the shutter speed I wanted to shoot at (didn't have a monopod) meant that I had to bump the ISO up to 400. The sun was almost directly overhead too, so I had to deal with shadows as well.

I used AF-S because I've not had a lot of luck with AF-C mode in the past with the 70-300G. I think it just can't keep up......

Good points Losfp. I understand the settings you've used now and, given the problems you had, you did well to get these shots at all. I, too, find the 70-300G way too slow focussing but can't really afford to upgrade yet.