There are times when one should heed common wisdom.  I almost always shoot using Aperture Priority.  I think most serious photographers do as it allows you to determine the depth of focus.  That having been said, most sports photographers would argue that shooting in Shutter Priority is better for sports.  It allows you to choose a shutter speed appropriate to freezing the action of your subject.

Saturday we went up to Denton to watch Mathias play football. This season, he is splitting time between his established position as corner back and his new position as running back.  Saturday, he played a significant part of the second half at running back.  He had a couple good, long runs and even scored a touchdown.  Of course, I had my cameras and shot the game.

I began in Aperture Priority and selected f/8.  It was a bright sunny day, and that allowed me to get good depth of field at a reasonable shutter speed.  I had the 70 – 200 lens on my a550 and the 500 on my a700.  Somehow at halftime, without my being aware of it, the aperture on my a700 got changed from f/8 to f/22.  As a result, almost every pic had motion blur because I was now shooting at a shutter speed of 1/50 sec. Here is an example:

This is one of the better ones. I should have paid closer attention, but I didn’t.  I should have shot using Shutter Priority, but I didn’t.