Originally posted by ThorSanchez If I'm taking pictures of my kids playing soccer I'm probably going to do what gives me the best odds, it's less a science experiment and more family history. With the dog in the front yard... probably more likely to stretch my limits.
Take some safe shots with your kids so that you can have some images of them and then challenge yourself by trying panning shots, by shooting wide open, different angles, etc. Soccer is for a photographer 50% anticipation and 50% finding good/different angles. My father was a soccer coach and I played soccer quite a few years. It's a challenging sport for a photographer but with practice you can get very good images.
Please don't get me wrong here. I understand that you may miss a lot of shots by doing what I told you, but if you get a few safe shots by shooting at f7-f9 and on top of that you will get even a single very good image out of 400 out of focus images, you will be happier with that different image than you will be with 400 images in focus in which you will also get the background almost as sharp as the subjects. And that one image will push you next time to try and get more similar images.
If you want safe shots (the ones that looks like they are taken with smartphones because everything is in focus), then a micro 4/3 camera will give you at f7 a DOF equivalent of f14 on a full frame and you will have everything in focus.