ChipThome wrote:
I must say though, I find it extremely odd the camera would have a soft focus unless live view is enabled, when it becomes what I see here as tack sharp. I don't understand why one should have any bearing on the other.
I don't have that camera, but I do have that lens. Are you pressing the shutter half way down and letting the VR engage, before pressing the shutter the rest of the way?
Resetting it is the buttons marked with the green dot: Info and I buttons, press and hold for about two seconds till you see the information display turn off briefly.
Try shooting in Aperture mode too. Once I got off the Auto/P mode on my D50, my shots improved
Thanks NOC..... I just tried that reset and it did reset everything but the color space, left that at Adobe. So I did a reset off the menu and now another holding the green dots buttons and it all seems set to default.
Tomorrow I will retry those images and see what those bring me.
I do shoot in Aperture Priority when I need to hold a low aperture. Otherwise often times its in P mode. I rarely shoot full auto as I like more control than that. I did this time to try and take myself as far out of the loop as possible.
Thanks again...... might be moving forward here !!!
The EXIF data is off just a bit compared to the properties. It looks like it got rounded as the one shot with the viewfinder is at 1.3 seconds and the one shot in Live View is 2.5.
A suggestion, you should invest some time into really learning your camera. It may be consumer grade but will do amazing things. You don't need to read the Nikon manual, there are many sources on the internet to help you. The first is to go through all the D5100 videos on the Nikon digitutor site:
First off, THANK YOU to all who posted and helped me get this straightened out !!!
As I stated, I assumed that resetting the shooting menu, reset the entire camera to Nikon default. As NightOwl Cat pointed out, the reset function is something entirely different. Over the last 6 months I assumed I was "going back to zero" with the resets of the menu that I did, where in reality, I was adding more glitches on top of the other ones I already had. That entire combination of 6 months worth of who knows what all I did, combined to give me the crappy results I was experiencing. Although the time difference of using the viewfinder and Live View still has me stumped, it is something I can plan for and live with.
Before this D5100, I had and still have the GH1. My reason for coming to Nikon was the 2.0 crop of the Panny was killing me indoors. I was really torn between the D7000 and D5100 when I was investigating Nikon. I loved all the buttons etc of the D7000 and the articulating screen of the D5100. What tipped me over to the D5100 was somewhere I read "while the D5100 has dozens of settings, the D7000 has hundreds". I knew then, as I just proved, that "dozens of settings" was more than enough to "get me into trouble" !!!
But only because of ALL YOUR HELP AND PERSISTENCE, I am back to getting some consistency and ready to once again plow forward !!!
Now the people at Panasonic probably aren't real crazy about all the help you gave to me. They were "this close" to shipping me out a new GH2 and several lenses to go with it !!!
Again..... than you all, your help has been greatly appreciated !!!!
Glad I could assist in getting your camera back to defaults Grab the PDF version of the manual here: http://www.nikonusa.com/pdf/manuals/kie88335f7869dfuejdl=-cww2/D5100_EN.pdf and keep it handy, use Acrobat's search function to help you find stuff quickly. Much more portable than lugging the paper versions with you Now go have some fun with that camera
I had these types of issues with my D50 before I learned more about the AF system. I would decouple the shutter release from the focus system. Set the flash lock button to act as a AF-on button, driving the autofocus, and switch the shutter to be shutter release only. Set your AF mode to AF-S and single point focus. The camera will focus on whatever is in selected AF point. You should get more consistent results. When I miss focus with this set up, I know who is to blame.
edit... helps to notice there is a second page to the thread - seems this advice might already be in action - if not give it a try!
oh wow! 
