mnmark Loc: NE Minnesota

Most likely the camera had locked onto the person behind the server and was in the process of acquiring focus when the frame was taken resulting in a focus area between the two. It’s common with people quickly moving in and out of the focus area.

rzigmont Loc: Olmsted Falls, Ohio

Wow . The chair looks more in focus!

flyboy61 Loc: The Great American Desert

Oooold post, but the information is VITAL for anyone who wants to be good at photography! Our cameras have a multitude of features (tooo many, inmnho) that can make photography better...or create hate and discontent. Like in Basketball,Go back to BASICS, and Execute!

flyboy61 Loc: The Great American Desert

Jules Karney Loc: Las Vegas, Nevada

I would first shoot manual. 1/1000 at wide open. Auto iso auto white balance.
Continuous single point focus. Two many choices for the camera to make. You control everything on the shoot. Fill the frame with your subject. And like Chris says practice practice and practice.
Take pictures of moving cars for instance.
Good luck
Jules

clansman Loc: wendover,england

Couldn't agree more, BBF becomes a natural habit and single spot will help the camera twice over.

paulrnzpn Loc: New Zealand

Auto ISO works. But picking the right fixed ISO will do the trick too.
Go for single point AF and then make sure you frame your subject in the exact spot where you have set your single point AF to.
Also, Shutter Priority is not the best mode to use here. Use Aperture Priority or Manual mode. In fact, because you're shooting indoors (where the lighting is always the same - no clouds moving over the sun, etc), if you set the camera to Manual Mode then every shot should give you a pretty consistent exposure.
Also, when you're always shooting wide, such as f/2.8 (the camera has been choosing that due to the low light when you're on Shutter Priority), you really have to nail the focus on the subject, otherwise you will have the focus problems that you're having. So the options to fix that are:
1) Use single point AF and make you you nail the right spot (as already mentioned above), or
2) Go for a smaller f-stop. A smaller f-stop, of around f/5.6 or f/7 or thereabouts, will make give a deeper DoF and help get more of everything in focus (the foreground subject as well as the background). However, that means you'll need to compensate with a higher ISO or longer exposure time, and the latter is no good for action shots of course.


I suggest you do this:
Set to single point AF and "AI Servo" (that's Canon, but don't use "One Shot" AF for moving targets).
Use Manual Mode and set shutter to 1/200sec and f/stop to something wide-to-medium (f/2.8 to f/7) and auto ISO.
If you find some shots are a bit too dark and/or a bit too light, check what ISO the camera chose for one of the photos where the exposure and sharpness look spot on and then manually set the ISO to the same.
And make sure you shoot RAW. It's amazing what you can pull out of dark RAW files in post. For example, if you have photos that look way too dark from the camera JPEGs, you can usually pull out something very usable from the RAW. I do that quite often and it never fails me, provided it's not 'too black' that is.

paulrnzpn Loc: New Zealand

Yes, and this is why one needs to choose a more suitable AF mode. Do that, and with a little bit of practice, soon you'll be nailing every shoot.
As someone else mentioned in this thread, you can practice by shooting moving cars in the street. Go to Aperture Priority and/or Manual Mode and try different AF modes and f-stops, etc, and see what works best, and then use that as a starting point when shooting your sports photos. Then all you'll have to do is make the adjustment for the different light at the sporting events (such as adjusting the ISO).

paulrnzpn Loc: New Zealand

Set "you focus mode to Shutter Priority"?
That does not compute.
Those are two different things.
Don't confuse the poor chap.

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

Don

marcelfilmfoto Loc: Westchester County, New York

Agree with this 100%.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

Looks like too many area focus points.
Try to narrow the focus points.

Tom Straight Loc: Barrackville West Virginia

I'm not totally sure what the focus pattern is but the more points you use the more chances you have of it focusing on the wrong thing which is the background in your case. I use the Group Pattern setting with my D850 and have used a D7500 which has the same setting. The pattern is big enough to lock onto a moving subject but not so big that it gets confused by the background. Good luck and enjoy you daughter as they don't stay this age for long.