My first attempts
So I shot over 100 pictures this morning with the new lens. Turned out to be a much, much bigger challenge than I'd thought because I can't seem to get the lens to work in anything other than complete manual mode - something I've never done before! Even the autofocus doesn't seem to work (even though it is an autofocusing lens that is compatible.....)
I'm definitely going to have to keep working with this lens. It's interesting having to move ME and not use the zoom like I have on my old lens. And I'm not used to having to think about BOTH aperture and shutter speed at the same time. Some of my shots turned out severly under or over exposed:
But eventually I was figuring it out. I shot some pictures of my daughter's stuffed pandas:
And some marbles:
(Lousy background, I know, but it's all I could come up with to keep the marbles from rolling away!)
The winter salt & peppers shakers:
and some shiny baubles my daughter calls her "treasure":
I'm really struggling with focusing. I wear glasses, and it's been well over a year since my last exam, so I realize that may be an issue. That's part of the reason I've always used autofocus! Can someone please help me figure out how to make autofocus work on my camera? My camera is a Nikon D80 and the lens is an AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D.
3 comments:
Great shots. I'm glad you got more comfortable in Manual. The more you shoot and play with your settings, the more you will get the hang of it. Before you know it, you'll be changing your settings without even thinking about it! :O) Focusing can be a challange. You'd think autofocus is great. But even when it works, it may not always be what you want. I'm struggling with foucs too. I have a Canon but here's what I changed and it seems to be helping. I changed my auto foucs mode to one shot. Now if I want to take a rule of thirds shot, I focus on the subject, keep the shutter button pressed half way, recomose my shot and focus is locked. I'm not sure why the focusing isn't working. The one thing that I can think of is if you are too close to what you are shooting, the camera cannot find focus. With the 50mm on a crop sensor, it's really more than 50mm. So you may have to stand further back and crop in your editing program. I hope that helps and I look forward to following your progress! :O)
Hmmm... I have a D60 and I know it was NOT autofocus compatible with the 1.8 lens. A royal pain in the ass if you ask me. I wear contacts and I know my prescription's not dead on and I had a horrible time. But the D80 is compatible as far as I know...is your camera set on manual focus by any chance?
I figured out the autofocus issue - I had been using the aperture ring on the lens to change the aperture. I just needed to lock that and use the camera control on the aperture. Now the autofocus works, as do aperture priority and shutter priority modes!
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