Canon 5D, 70-200/f2.8L, have always shot on the green box setting, pics of live motion are never crisp.

I bought the camera years ago with the thought of taking a lot of pics but never really panned out.

Looking for some "cheat sheet" information as the game is Saturday and would like to get some "action" shots.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I use a Pentax K-5 with a Pentax zoom 18-250 f3.5-6.3 to take my son's baseball game photos and set the camera to time priority at 1/250s and the ISO to just 200 in a bright day.  If it gets darker I raise the ISO to 400.   The camera does all the rest.    

That does the trick for me.  I tried the green button (in Pentax's case the camera decides everything) and sometimes it did not give me the speed I wanted.  Below 1/250s the ball and the bat sometimes became just blurs.

Another thing if they let you do so is to go and take the photos from the field, kneeling down at their level, then press the shutter button and let it into burst mode.  I have to press as soon as the pitcher throws the ball.  Everything happens too fast after that.  


Nonetheless, the best thing is you trying different settings and see which works best.  Try to play with your camera asking your daughter to throw and bat some balls while you take photos.   The blur is likely due to slow speed.

Practice Practice Practice. If all else fail's take the shot gun.

Sometimes a little blur can be nice.



I call this one "oops"


But sometimes crisp action is better






Most of those were done with a D90 and a kit 70-300 zoom.

Shot in aperture priority, f/8 to help with DOF a bit. ISO was varied to give faster or slower shutter speeds. These here were at 800, I think. Check the exif. There might be other cameras and odd settings used. I also had a Casio EX-F1 at the time that occasionally got used at games.

I didn't make it to any games this year, but now that I'm using a D7100 and a 70-200 2.8 and have a 2x tele to go with it, I'd like to think my results could be much, much better.

You will probably want a shutter speed of 1/500 to freeze the players.
Aperture of f/2.8 or f/4 to blur the backgrounds.
I would shoot in aperture-priority mode, set the aperture to where I want it, boost the ISO to get the needed shutter speed.
200mm may be OK for shooting the infield from the infield, but it will not be long enough for the outfielders.

The 5D isn't particularly great at sports photography, but it'll work. Set your autofocus to AI Servo and use back button focus. I always preferred to select a single focus point over letting the camera try to decide. Oh and make sure to limit the focus range on the lens to minimize focus seeking.

I would recommend aperture priority at 3.5 or 4 and and ISO of 400 for a sunny day. That should be plenty to stop motion.

Thanks guys

Might be too late, but never hurts for future reference.

1.  When shooting through fence, use long focal length to lessen the Depth of field.  Go to aperture priority and choose the lowest you can get to, 5.6 or lower and a high-ish ISO.  Make sure the SS is 250 or more. Or you can just go manual.  Be mindful of clouds and the light.
2. If focusing on batters, shoot from 1st base line unless they have a bunch of left-handers.  This goes for shooting outfielders and third base as well.
3.  If focusing on runners, shoot from 3rd base line so you can catch a slide into second base.  Of course, if you want to get the fielders instead of the runners, you shoot from 1st base line.
4.  Pitchers look great from about a few feet to the right or left of the batter.  
5.  Coaches, Umps almost never mind a photog to come into the dugout and shoot from the little opening in the gate. Sometimes the ump might get pissy about it, but it's always worth a try.
6.  Shoot with both eyes open so you can see the action.  You don't need a fancy camera with 1,000 fps if you know how to anticipate and time the action.
7.  Tilting the camera a bit when shooting will give an extra bit of dynamic action to the shot.  Of course you can do this in post as well.
8.  Shoot manual focus if you can.  Fences and backstops will ruin an autofocused shot quick.

I find that for girls you don't have to run as fast of a shutter speed. I'm not the best at this, but I'm getting way better.



ISO 100, 140mm from a 70-200 F2.8L on a 70D, F3.5, 1/350th


















 

As others have said, the biggest thing is going to be fast shutter speed. Shoot at 2.8 -4.0 @200 as much as possible to isolate the subjects from the background. To keep the shutter above 500 as much as possible use a higher ISO once it starts getting dark. The nice thing about baseball and softball games is that they last long time, so you'l have plenty of time to play with settings and experiment.



If there is a fence, get close as you can to the fence so you can focus through it otherwise your auto focus will be bouncing all over.






Don't take an 18 month old domestic terrorist with you if you are the only one to watch him. He'll make it extra hard.



















































 

This is the kind of result I get using 1/250 with shutter priority.   I play with the ISO settings to vary the aperture the camera picks.



It gives that motion blur that, at least for me, feels just right.   In this case it even captured the ball's distorted shape after the bat hit it, which is also blurred a bit.


However, I am struggling the lens.  I use a Pentax 1:3.5-6.3 18-250MM zoom lens that shows its limitations when he plays at night.   It focus very slow and keeps chasing the focus.  

I use the 250mm quite a bit, like in the case of this photo.   It seems that I would have to pick a smaller range zoom with a bigger aperture rate since most wide range zooms seems to suffer from the light limitation.   Thoughts?

I would agree that being F6.3 at 250mm is not going to help you shoot as the sun is going down without cranking up the ISO.