Anonymous
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Clevercloggs
I've got exactly the same kit. I use about 800 ISO and select 'shutter priority' . Choose a shutter speed, say 1/500th, thats plenty fast enough to stop human movement, it's not really necessary to be any faster, and depth of field will cover any slight inaccuracies in focus. If you use the sports mode the camera will crank up the ISO settings to maintain a high shutter speed. The lens will be at full aperture all the time resulting in extremely shallow depth of field and digital noise.
Autofocus can be a pain in theass so set it to single point and follow the ball. I use manual focus when doing shots like this, practice makes it easier.
Set the camera to multiple shot mode, it will continue to take pictures as long as the shutter is pressed. Follow the ball constantly firing the shutter when theres something interesting happening.
Experience is essential, you will get better as you go along. By all means use sports mode first then use the method I suggest, see which works for you. Shoot wide, you can crop later. The photo below is a completely random one from my first ever batch using the method described. Was shooting at ISO640, using 1/500th and widest aperture F4.2. It was a very dull day, But pretty good results anyway.
retiredPhil
Hope you bought the more expensive 70-300mm VR lens. Not only is it sharper, but the VR will allow you to use it handheld.
In either case, if you can use a tripod, do. If not, use the viewfinder, not Live View (the screen).
Maybe the Sports scene mode will do all you need to start with. To gain better control of the camera you will need to learn about the PASM modes, especially the Shutter priority mode.
EDWIN
First, read and study the Owner's Manual for your camera and learn how to use the camera's light meter. Learn about Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority as well and ignore all those silly Scene Modes or whatever Nikon calls them. Learn to take control of your camera.
Also, learn about the Exposure Triangle so you'll understand that you can't just select a shutter speed and expect good results.
http://digital-photography-school.com/learning-exposure-in-digital-photography/
For outdoor soccer games on a sunny day your 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom should be acceptable. However, for night games you'll have to use a really high ISO to get a shutter speed marginally fast enough to stop action. Go back to the Owner's Manual and learn what Spot Metering is and how to use it. Spot Metering allows you to meter just the subject instead of the entire scene. At night this is the metering mode to use.
Also, understand that some motion blur can be desirable since it indicates movement. Study these tutorials:
http://digital-photography-school.com/a-beginners-to-capturing-motion-in-your-photography/
http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-capture-motion-blur-in-photography/
http://digital-photography-school.com/mastering-panning-to-photograph-moving-subjects/ This is somewhat difficult and will require a lot of practice but the results are well worth the effort.
nancy
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