A long time ago I had purchased a lightly D300 and loved it from day one. Recently I got a good deal on a used d7000 and I am about to use it as a hockey puck. The focus is horrible. My Nikon 80-2000 has always been a great lens but on the D7000 it is horrible.
Between that and the odd controls I am about to sell the D7000 and drop back to the d300. Is there any tips any can provide to steer me in the right direction with the D7000?
Almost every picture taken with D7000 and 80-200 combo is blurry. I cannot tell whether it is back focused or not but plan on trying to calibrate tonight.
With over 200K clicks on the D7K's I find this hard to believe. I'm pushin' 98% in focus shots
shootin' BIF/sports. Did the guy you bought it from have such "issues" ?! Did you try another lens?!
Proper settings are a must with the Cam4500 AF as well as good technique. I'd look to fine tuning,
cleaning contacts, and tweaking AF settings BEFORE starting a thread on cough horrible focus.
You obviously need to "dial in" the D7000.
That and increase your shutter speed by roughly the ration of 16 to 12.
Could it also be that more MegaPixels are showing user error Mo Beta?
I had to learn to be more careful and steady myself better when I started using the D7000.
If your 80-200 is the push pull variety, the glass my be nearly the same but
it is light years behind the AF-S or even the newest version.
trenchmonkey wrote:
With over 200K clicks on the D7K's I find this hard to believe. I'm pushin' 98% in focus shots
shootin' BIF/sports. Did the guy you bought it from have such "issues" ?! Did you try another lens?!
Proper settings are a must with the Cam4500 AF as well as good technique. I'd look to fine tuning,
cleaning contacts, and tweaking AF settings BEFORE starting a thread on cough horrible focus.
Yeah, you know until I got the D600 with a very comparable AF system all I could go on was TM's reviews on the AF system. Today I am MORE than comfortable saying that the D600 is absolutely first-rate for keeper percentage. Today I shot some 700 images from a Varsity rugby game and my keeper rate with the D600 was at least the equal of the D3S in the same situation. That's HIGHLY impressive to me. It is shockingly good. Granted that was with a 300/f2.8VR lens, but while it may not "punch" the way the D3S does for initial acquisition, it plain tracks like a demon, and out of some 725 images I might have had 10-15 out of focus, and all pretty much my fault.
I think you have some kind of setup issue, or possibly need to play around with the AF fine tune. This camera is quickly convincing me I no longer have ANY reason to hang on to the D700 as a 2nd cam.
If you're using the same shutter speeds as your D300, you'll probably get blurry images at 100%. My D700 made me feel like a rockstar right away, and my D7000 was disappointing until I got more practice with it. Once I upped my shutter speeds and improved my technique a bit, the D7000 was great. I traded it towards a D800, but I'm looking to pick up another D7000 probably as a lighter/longer reach 2nd body. They're somewhat similar; I think it's just the increased resolution that has people disappointed, in that it shows you every flaw in your technique or setup for the first time.
Check the focusing in a controlled test too - mine needed from -2 to -20 correction on all of my lenses, none were ok with no correction, and most needed -10 or more.
My 80-200 push-pull never looked that sharp on by D200. Was it the lens or the camera? I don't know. But I used the AF fine tune on my D7000 and now I can get beautiful sharp pixel peeping images with the 80-200.
Have shot both.D7000 needs better glass and better technique with the higher resolution.also need to AF fine tune with the d7000.I was very disappointed at first but now that I have the glass technique and the fine tune dialed in...no comparison.Besides the resolution the dynamic range is night and day. Doug
trenchmonkey wrote:
With over 200K clicks on the D7K's I find this hard to believe. I'm pushin' 98% in focus shots
shootin' BIF/sports. Did the guy you bought it from have such "issues" ?! Did you try another lens?!
Proper settings are a must with the Cam4500 AF as well as good technique. I'd look to fine tuning,
cleaning contacts, and tweaking AF settings BEFORE starting a thread on cough horrible focus.
I agree the focus is horrible. If you have moving objects in low light. Forget it.
All I can say is lol. Those having issues using a D7000 doesn't know what they are doing. Period. 90% of what I do on the D7000 is AF and it's spot on as hell, even on low light. A D7000 isn't a D3. Technique is the key and know the camera's weakness. Check my shots and I haven't missed a single frame...
Sounds to me to be a technique issue as others have mentioned. Though I use the 80-200 mostly on the D800 and F100 I have tried it a few times on the D7000 and had no issues at all. I'd be curious of the shutter speeds as someone else mentioned, slight camera shake that is hard to spot at 12MP becomes apparent at 18MP if you're pixel peeping.
i don't normally post, but you people are ridiculous.
"i've done 300,000,000 pictures and they are all in focus, it's your fault"
"all i can say is lol"
"it's technique"
it's like blaming the driver when the automatic transmission won't shift.
here is how hard it is to take sharp pictures:
1) point camera
2) press focus button
3) success
if this doesn't work, it's not you, it's the camera. and for the rest of you geniuses who can't offer anything useful to say other than blame the victim, would love to hear what song you would sing if you had the faulty hardware.
Jason, you're not crazy. If after 20 mins of focus tweaking doesn't help, then the camera is the problem. if you still can, return the camera. they sold you a lemon.
To be honest as a beginner, and after reading the comments i won't ask for advice in this forum in order to avoid being mocked up or laughed at. It's great if you are good at what you do but it's nicer if you are modest about it. Everyone is better than you at something so chill down champ.
more i think about it the madder this makes me. the amount of bad advice and snobbery that goes on is overwhelming. not one of you stops to think that the OP is a thinking human being that has probably used photo equipment in the past and probably has a good reason to come to the forums asking if his problems are shared by others. no, you RUSH to your keyboards to tell him how his experience is wrong and give some cheesy anecdote about how your one camera is perfect.
d7000 has a documented record of awful focusing. i had a bad experience. it wasn't that the pictures were back or front focused, it was they were off focus about 60% of the time in either direction. unstable. even went back to nikon for service. somehow none of the cameras that came before the d7k or the ones that came after, needed any special technique to deliver sharp pictures.
what special technique do you think you have? do you wiggle your finger in a special way when holding down the focus button? or hold your breath and close your left eye?
hijazist wrote:
To be honest as a beginner, and after reading the comments i won't ask for advice in this forum in order to avoid being mocked up or laughed at. It's great if you are good at what you do but it's nicer if you are modest about it. Everyone is better than you at something so chill down champ.
Jason Moody wrote:
A long time ago I had purchased a lightly D300 and loved it from day one. Recently I got a good deal on a used d7000 and I am about to use it as a hockey puck. The focus is horrible. My Nikon 80-2000 has always been a great lens but on the D7000 it is horrible.
Between that and the odd controls I am about to sell the D7000 and drop back to the d300. Is there any tips any can provide to steer me in the right direction with the D7000?
Yes, I've had that same problem with 2 of the D7000 bodies. The 80-200 was off by more than the adjustable range of the MFT in the camera. Other lenses were better, but all needed some adjustment and were not entirely consistent on the tests. After almost 3 months Nikon finally sent the first camera back and we were able to get the lenses calibrated acceptably, but not what I consider as good as with other bodies. You will find several threads about D7000 AF issues if you do a search.
Unfortunately the D7000 is a cheap camea and they have to cut corners in the AF system and the motor mechanics especially. It's been truly disappointing that Nikon has not replaced the D300 with a D400 or similar higher grade DX body for reach and speed.
ReyGay wrote:
All I can say is lol. Those having issues using a D7000 doesn't know what they are doing. Period. 90% of what I do on the D7000 is AF and it's spot on as hell, even on low light. A D7000 isn't a D3. Technique is the key and know the camera's weakness. Check my shots and I haven't missed a single frame...
Maybe you are fortunate to have received a good one and your lenses are nicely compatible, but it's completely unreasonable to blame other users for a body that does not work properly.
I'm pushin' 98% in focus shots