Great shots! I especially like the first and third.
I would generally recommend you try to shoot full manual, including ISO. You just need to constantly be aware of changing cloud cover or if the sun goes down. So on a cloudy day it can be almost set it and forget it, but other days you need to change settings regularly. In the long run, you'll learn to do a better job than the camera. Chimp - look at the resulting photos with histogram regularly to do this.
The alternative is to use one of the metering modes. The camera just looks at the average amount of light in the chosen area and tries to expose to a middle amount of light. I tend to prefer center weighted - the open circle. Generally the center area of the picture will include a person, and not much sky and not be overwhelmed by dark jerseys. Spot weighting will vary quite a bit based on only the very center of the picture, which may be on a white jersey one photo and the dark jersey tackling him on the next shot. So the photos will be very uneven in exposure. Evaluative metering uses the full photo, but some shots will have a lot of sky, others not. So it doesn't work well either.
Like in the three photos you shared, I'd expect that the first one which has a good mix of light and dark throughout the center and the entire picture - would be exposed well regardless of mode. The second one has a dark jersey leg in the center, as well as fairly dark grass - so spot or center weighting would result in an overexposed shot. And the third one has a lot of sky and a bright white jersey toward the center - so it may be underexposed especially in spot or center weighting (the dark bushes may result in evaluative weighting working well)
I would generally recommend you try to shoot full manual, including ISO. You just need to constantly be aware of changing cloud cover or if the sun goes down. So on a cloudy day it can be almost set it and forget it, but other days you need to change settings regularly. In the long run, you'll learn to do a better job than the camera. Chimp - look at the resulting photos with histogram regularly to do this.
The alternative is to use one of the metering modes. The camera just looks at the average amount of light in the chosen area and tries to expose to a middle amount of light. I tend to prefer center weighted - the open circle. Generally the center area of the picture will include a person, and not much sky and not be overwhelmed by dark jerseys. Spot weighting will vary quite a bit based on only the very center of the picture, which may be on a white jersey one photo and the dark jersey tackling him on the next shot. So the photos will be very uneven in exposure. Evaluative metering uses the full photo, but some shots will have a lot of sky, others not. So it doesn't work well either.
Like in the three photos you shared, I'd expect that the first one which has a good mix of light and dark throughout the center and the entire picture - would be exposed well regardless of mode. The second one has a dark jersey leg in the center, as well as fairly dark grass - so spot or center weighting would result in an overexposed shot. And the third one has a lot of sky and a bright white jersey toward the center - so it may be underexposed especially in spot or center weighting (the dark bushes may result in evaluative weighting working well)
