Went out and shot with a fellow FM'r and he helped me with some of my settings. Then went and tried it on my own. I only resized

Not sure what you did different but you have some nice shots here. Keep up the good work.

What types of different settings did you try? Do you think it helped?

The biggest change, move my SS from 1600 to around 3500 and up. That meant keeping my ISO higher than 100. Was suggested to stop shooting with extenders, and that helped. Don't like the less range, especially the 70-200, but if I get shots like these, then extenders are gone. I used to shoot for $$$ with small photography company and kept those settings before. NOW, I see the difference and LOVE it. I got 80% keepers. the 20% was due to my dumness. out of those 80%, 95% are sharp straight from camera. It was opposite before. Thanks for the comments. Now I KNOW it was worth spending $4k for the 400 2.8


Of course, now that i want to find older pictures taken before this Sunday, I can't find them.

Based on images 1, 2 & 4 I think your lens is back-focusing a tad? Also the colors here seem flat to me?

Andy

ifxbonz, thanks. I don't see the back focus and can not agree or disagree on colors, since my monitors are not calibrated. The shot is straight out of camera, with only crop and resize of them. thank you for looking

You're doing well, 1 is a bit soft but timed perfectly (which is the hardest part!), 4 is a good shot but the front player is out of focus, unfortunately, which is a shame because it would've been a top shot otherwise.

Some good results though, and technical issues are one thing, but if it's timed and composed well then that's still something very positive you can take out of it. Nice work!