Not exactly sure what your shooting conditions are but you might check to see if you have "long exposure noise reduction" on. If so, you might try turning it off.

A true macro lens is the best way to go but if you are on a tight budget and just getting into macro, I would go with the extension tubes with your 55mm lens. The close up filters work best with a 70-200 zoom in my opinion.

This is better than pants half way down their rear so everybody can see their underwear.

Two things jump out at me when looking at your image. The first thing is you are basically shooting at a focal length of almost 1800mm with a shutter speed of only 1/500. Even with image stabilization, that is a lot to ask. The second thing that many don't consider when trying to get sharp images from a long distance is the atmosphere. Heat from the ground causes disturbances in the air that will definitely affect sharpness. The more air you are shooting through, the more prevalent the problem.

To tell you the truth, the only quality photos that you will be able to get if you are in the stands is to take landscape shots of the stadium and field or photos of the people around you. If you are wanting to get shots of the players, you really need to get field access. Your camera phone would be enough for the most part. Enjoy the experience and the game.

If you shoot in RAW, you can use Adobe Camera Raw which is in Photoshop. It is the same Raw processing engine as Lightroom.

f/4, 1/1250, iso 400

Shot with a Nikon D5 with a Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 + 1.4x teleconverter.

The biggest issue with shooting football at high noon is the heavy shadows inside the helmet. The body might be properly lit, but you can't see faces. If you shoot where the sun is more towards their back, basically putting the whole front side of their body in shadow, you can then expose the body and face evenly. The background may end up a bit bright. I would shoot in manual so that you have full control of the exposure. If you do any post processing, I would shoot in RAW. This way you can raise shadows, not only globally, but selectively. If you go this route, I would slightly underexpose so that there are no blown highlights in the background and then raise exposure in post. You have 2 1/2 to 3 stops to play within RAW. I don't think the flash will have any effect since you will be too far away for it to overpower the sun.

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Welcome. Just spent a few days in the bay area, I am jealous of all the photographic sights available to you.

Did you focus and recompose or was your focus point on the bird? The D750 will meter off of where the focus point is, so it will make a difference in how you shot. I have used the highlight meter and it works fine. Just like anything else, you have to understand the situations and limitations.

The D500 is an awesome sports camera. That being said, the D800 is also fantastic. If you get a battery grip for the D800 and use the EN-EL18 battery or AA batteries and shoot in DX mode, you can get 6 fps. Your images resolution will drop down to 16 MP in the DX mode.

The advantages of the XQD compared to CF and SD are durability (no pins or exposed contacts) and speed. They increase the speed of the transfer of information from the camera to the card and the card to the computer. Most CF cards top out at around 160 m/ps and standard SD's top out at around 95 m/ps. Current XQD's (and CFast) can move info at over 400 m/ps. If speed is crucial (photojournalist), then faster cards WILL speed up your workflow. I have been able to transfer my images from a game into my computer, cull and caption, and have them sent out before many have even finished importing the images into their computers.

Thanks Tom.

The fast shooing speed, greatly improved auto-focus system, and hi iso capabilities of this crop sensor body are amazing. It compliments my D4 very well. It is, in my opinion, the best crop sensor body available. Professional grade top to bottom. The following samples were all shot between iso 8000 and 16000 with a little noise reduction added.

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Even with strobes, your still only going to be shooting single shot. Battery operated strobes have about a 3-4 second recycle, a/c maybe 1 second.

On a different note, I hope you have business liability insurance if you are strobing games. Many facilities won't even allow it unless you have a 2 million dollar policy. With flashes, you have to worry about fire possibilities, injury from falling light stands, someone has an epileptic seizure due to the flash, etc... You do not want to be caught with your pants down, so to speak.