Canon Newbie - advice for shooting soccer

vincentp wrote:

Karl_Guttag wrote:

Some big bad news, I think you are going to find the 70-200 far too short unless you can get up close and run up and down the sidelines.

Yes, I'm aware of that (and I can get close, right up to the line), I didn't want to go down f4.5-7 - otherwise I would have just stayed with the fuji apsc system. I'm keeping my eye out for a used 300 or 400mm f2.8 but they don't come up that often.

I'm curious why you think you need f2.8 to shoot soccer. Are you worried about subject isolation (background blur) or keeping the shutter speed high and ISO low? Or do you have a lighting issue, such as night games under the lights?

With the R5, I would not be afraid to push the ISO to above 6,400 (based on experiments I made with DXO DeepPrime). ISO 6,400 would get you to to a shutter speed of 1/12,800 at f8 (if the R5 could shoot that fast) on a sunny day, and 3,200 at f8 on an overcast day,

At 500mm and f7 you are still going to get very good subject isolation. By having a longer focal length you will get better isolation.  Even if you are on the sidelines, the far side of a soccer field is pretty far away unless you are talking small kid soccer.

It seems to me that you would be better off with the large zoom range to be able to reach out and pull back based on the action.

I'm not sure what your problem is on setting the dials other than it is a bit buried on the Customize (Orange) menu tab 3 (once again the Jan Wegener video may help).

The functions that can be assigned to the main dial are very limited. Not sure why they would limit them like that. It's going to take some getting used to, lots of muscle memory to overcome!

It gives you 10 options which to me is pretty flexible. What are you wanting to move to the wheel? BTW, I have mine set to exposure compensation with the lens control set to ISO. The R5 has a lot of buttons plus the new control wheel on the lenses.