Thanks for the follow up!

Glad you found the reply helpful!

It sounds like you have the right lens for your situation. With sports I feel like you’re always going to be compromising on focal length (too tight for close action, too wide for far action). It sounds like you’re reviewing your EXIF info, so you can certainly use past data to help inform what focal length you’re using the most.

I would personally lean on shutter priority unless you can guarantee that you’ll never over-expose. Clipped highlights obviously aren’t recoverable. I don’t know that I trust myself enough to watch the histogram and we’ve had many games that were partly sunny - oscillating between direct and indirect sun. It would be nice to be able to say “increase shutter speed if necessary otherwise bump ISO” but that’s sadly not a real shooting mode.

My 150-500 is a fairly slow lens, but since it’s on a FF body it’s amazing what it can see through. Chain link fences don’t completely disappear, but they’re a lot less visible than they were on my somewhat faster 70-300 on a crop body.

First, keep your camera in AF-C and shoot in bursts. Bursts do two things: increase the odds of getting a sharp photo and maximize the chances of capturing just-the-right moment (for example, a catch). Do not use AF-S. I suggest not attempting manual focus, but you do you if that’s what you’re into.

3D is what Nikon called “tracking” on their DSLR bodies. It tracks your subject as it moves around somewhat decently. I’m not sure how well it works on a D7500 with lots of potential subjects, but the idea is that you put the focus box over your intended subject, engage tracking, and the camera will follow the subject around as it moves. You can learn how this works easily in your house. Put a cup on a counter, engage tracking, and pan the camera around while keeping the cup in frame. Your camera should keep a focus box over the cup. If it doesn’t, odds are you didn’t engage tracking so try again until you get a feel for it.

I would use either 3D tracking or single point AF. For single point AF, simply keep the focus box over your subject and you can basically guarantee it will be in focus. Assuming your lens can focus fast enough, you can’t miss. This is how I shot 95% of auto racing, along with youth sports before I got a long lens for my new (to me) FF body. You really can’t miss if the focus box is over your intended subject and there’s nothing obscuring your line of sight.

Do not use auto area, 9 point, etc because you’re going to want to control where the camera is focusing when there are lots of people on the field. Most cameras will generally go for the closest subject, but the action point could be behind them.

The minimum required shutter speed depends on the pace of action, as well as whether or not you’re trying to introduce some blur intentionally (eg motorsports). 1/1000 is probably a good starting point. Evaluate your photos and go from there. I can’t imagine that the 1/1600 you were shooting at was the cause of soft photos, unless you have fairly pronounced hand tremors.

What lens are you using? You’re going to want a decent amount of reach. I’m a big fan of the Nikon AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR on a crop body and used it for many years on my D5300. It is a FX lens, but the focus is fast and accurate, the VR is good, it’s pretty light for what it is, and since you’re using the center of a full frame image circle on your DX body you’re going to have zero vignetting. I shot it 100% hand held and never had any issues doing so.

I’ve recently started taking photos at youth sports and I can tell you that you’ll want the reach if you’re at any distance from your subject. I often wound up 100-115 feet from home plate and spent quite a bit of time at the 500mm end of my 150-500 lens on my current FF body.

Assuming your lens is sharp wide open, set your camera to S and let the camera manage ISO and aperture as needed. Don’t step down unless you have to. Unless you have a fast prime, odds are you’ll need all the light you can get.

Finally, know the sport you’re shooting, anticipate the action, and if you can move around try to position yourself so you’ll have good line of sight on that action. Players looking in your direction is ideal, but you’ll at least want to be able to see their eyes looking at whatever they’re focusing on. Bonus points if that thing is also in frame.

With sports, capturing the action takes front seat to composition. That said, you’re going to generally want to be up or downfield from the action so people are facing you when the action inevitably comes your way.

That’s cool! I also wasn’t trying to say whether or not it was or wasn’t you, I really just wanted more context on the photo. I’m assuming that it’s actually two skulls?

https://www.aliceferox.com/blog/2021/7/21/comfortable-to-die

Looks like it’s probably an art project, but still a neat idea.

Procedural photography! If I had to bet, your phone probably took a massive stack of photos and stacked them to have that much depth of field, even on a sensor as small as what resides in a cellphone.

Dedicated cameras are great for motion, telephoto, and low light but I really wonder what Samsung would be up to these days if they had kept going on their interchangeable lens cameras. Standing cameras these days have fantastic hardware with software that feels stuck in the early 00s.

Depth of field for days! Nice photo.

Nice photo and good work on the edit to make the water pop. Cellphone cameras are pretty good, but I still prefer a dedicated camera for most situations.

Most instances will prevent you from uploading “large” files. For lemmy.world, I think the cap is around 2 MB. It’s actually somewhat frustrating because my (most/all?) client apps allows you to upload photos, but the upload will fail 90% of the time. There doesn’t appear to be an API to check for this size limit and/or the client(s) aren’t using it and resizing a temp copy of the photo before upload. I often wonder if this is contributing to a somewhat low post level… I make the vast majority of my posts from my PC for this reason if they’re going to have more than one photo.

That’s sad. I really dislike screens as windows, especially when you’re able to get close to them and walk relative to them. The lack of change in perspective as you move makes them feel like a very early 90s video game

Are those screens mascarading as windows?

It’s pretty annoying in 10 too. I had a big scratch folder on my desktop and one day it decided to start syncing with one drive after a restart and one of those setup/welcome like screens.

Red dead redemption 2 didn’t stop at being pretty. If it did I don’t think we would all talk about it so fondly. Totally agree that it’s a great looking game though.

Thanks for following up! I played the OG halflife when it came out, so I will be sure to check this out.

Let us know what you think of it! It certainly looks like it could be entertaining.

Subscribed to the second and link. I like to lurk/sort by subscribed and new and will try to comment when I have something to contribute. Niche communities are hard to form without a decent user base, but a general recommends community seems like a great idea.

That’s interesting. Zested lemon (finely grated lemon peel) has a pretty strong flavor too. I guess it’s not as intensely sour though.

Electronic shutter

As an OM-1 MK1 dabbler, I find my hit rate much higher if not using one of the SH modes. Not sure if procap is available with ‘regular’ ES. But you’re right, metric tons of photos to cull. I’ll have to give digiKam a go. All I use PM for us culling. There’s a ton more it can do, but I’m def not using it to it’s fullest.

The big workflow gap for me is culling. Thankfully I have a legacy license for Photo Mechanic, but their new pricing structure is very unappealing.