Most of my photography has been of relatively stationary subjects, where I just use single-servo AF and either focus & recompose or move the single focus point to where in the frame I want the subject, or largely-individual sports like triathlon. But I've struggled getting sharp shots in team sports photography with a large number of moving people in frame.
If I try using continuous autofocus, it often focuses on the wrong subject or the background or seemingly nothing at all. If I try falling back on the techniques that work in other contexts, I usually just can't get the shot off at the right time.
I don't really understand the different autofocus options on my camera. I was mostly using what it calls "3D", but I also briefly tried "group-area". I don't really understand how group-area differs from d9 or even 3D. And my camera's manual doesn't clear things up for me. I spent a little while in manual autofocus with a fairly closed aperture, by using autofocus and then switching to manual and leaving it untouched; but this only worked when play stayed roughly the same distance from the camera for a while, so didn't really scale well.
Separate from the focus question, I spent the afternoon shooting at 1/1600. I'm not completely sure if this is fast enough, and maybe some of the blur in my photos is actually better explained by camera shake (shooting at 200 mm on a 1.5x crop sensor) or movement of the subjects. I suspect it's probably not relevant, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
What's the best advice for how to get sharp shots in team sports photography?
(Included photo is a SOOC jpeg of a set play on the opposite side of the field from where I was...a situation that minimised my chance of focus problems.)
Mainly just to force the lens to stay wide open even if play moves from a shaded area into the bright sun.
But yeah you might be right. The autofocus on my lens seems to be reasonably quick, but that just might not be good enough for quick sudden movements in play. I'll have to practise and play around to see if it's a user problem or an equipment problem. In the latter case I may have to stop down. In which case manual with auto-ISO becomes even more important.
Uhh, mods, why did this get removed? It seemed like entirely reasonable advice to me when I skimmed over it before.