Canon Newbie - advice for shooting soccer

Karl_Guttag wrote:

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?

Subject isolation yes, and keeping the shutter speed high is important for soccer. I guess I need to learn to trust using higher iso's on this camera.

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.

You might be right on that, shot a game today and could have used some extra reach for sure. I'll have to wait a while now for the budget to allow purchasing more lenses (selling my fuji gear).

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.

The main dial only allows Tv Av or Off - while the second dial does indeed allow 10 options - not sure why they would limit the main dial like that?

I shot one game today, I stayed in one spot on the sideline down near the goal and let the game come to me. The light was extremely variable from bright sunshine to dull overcast and I spent a lot of the game experimenting with the auto focus settings and switching between manual and shutter priority. I did get a lot of overexposed shots, need to get used to the evf (yes I had exposure simulation turned on). One thing I really liked about the evf was very little lag or stuttering like I used to see with the XT-3.

Tracking autofocus doesn't work to well for soccer.. too many things to jump to, single point worked well (as you would expect).

I my keeper rate was around 60% - it will get better when I learn my way around.. lots of muscle memory to unlearn (like the zoom direction being opposite to fuji!).