D7000 Problems

Hi Everyone,

I'm experiencing some funky issues with my D7000. I've never had any problems before and suddenly I seem to be having MANY all at once.

1. When shooting, the camera focus will lock in and then when I push the shutter button, nothing happens. It'll get stuck in this situation until I take the battery out for a few seconds and put it back in, then it fires just fine again. This has been happening for a while. It "COULD" potentially be due to the memory card speed, so I'm working to get a newer faster one, but I've had this memory card for a while, and though I'd had it be slow to respond, I've never had it focus, and then not take the photo before. This was a huge issue at a wedding a couple of weeks ago

2. On Sunday I was shooting outdoors, in very bright mid-day sun. I was shooting with a flash, shutter at 250 and F11 and it was blown out as could be. I NEVER ever shoot that high, I'm almost always on F2-5'ish range, and never do I have blown out images like that.

3. Nikon is also taking occasional blurry shots for no reason. It's a very SLIGHT blur, that I didn't even catch until I pulled them into RAW. These are blurry on a shutter speed above 100, and in broad daylight. I also did a studio shoot, camera ON Tripod, with on camera flash as well as off camera lighting, and had blurry images for a client

Question - Could these issues potentially be caused from something having to do with sand in the camera? The 1st issue has been going on for a while, but the latter I've started noticing after I did a shoot at the Sand Dunes.

I'm not sure if these things are lens related? or in camera related?

What, if any, error messages are you getting on the top LCD?

kristentyler said:

2. On Sunday I was shooting outdoors, in very bright mid-day sun. I was shooting with a flash, shutter at 250 and F11 and it was blown out as could be. I NEVER ever shoot that high, I'm almost always on F2-5'ish range, and never do I have blown out images like that.

Click to expand...

I will try this one... In bright sun, you should be around 1/250 and f/11. Sunny 16 says 1/200 f/11, but 1) final value can depend on what the meter sees, and 2) D7000 automation will try to keep shutter fast as sync is possible, and open the aperture a bit, maybe to f/10 at 1/250. But as the ambient actually meters... we are talking 1/3 stop.

Without flash, you have do options to use Equivalent Exposures, like 1/2000 f/4, but flash sync limits you to 1/250 second maximum (1/200 on many models. 1/250 on yours). Just how flash is.

You said blown out... what was blown out? The more distant background (which is ambient only), or the near subject lighted by both ambient and flash?

Which flash? The D7000 internal flash? What metering mode? Spot metering mode?
Without knowing specifics, not much more can be said.

The default metering mode of the internal flash, SB-700 flash, SB-400 flash, most third party flashes... is TTL BL mode, balanced flash mode, especially designed for fill flash in bright sun. The flash metering will back off then (in bright sun), to be fill flash instead, and will not overexpose the subject. You should like it (perhaps a bit less so indoors).

TTL mode (which can be set on a few flash menus, SB-600, SB-800, SB-900) does not back off. You get full metered ambient exposure, and full metered flash exposure, which is two proper exposures, and therefore one stop overexposure. Guaranteed. For fill flash, we just know to use around -2 EV Flash Compensation to come out right. Or to use TTL BL mode, which does the same.

If you select Spot metering, you reset any flash model metering to be mode TTL instead of TTL BL (and thus surely get overexposure of near subject in bright ambient). Spot metering assumes we know what we are doing, and how to do it. Spot metering is far from point&shoot.