From my experience of shooting with the D7000 and now the D800 is be patient and be prepared to burn a lot of frames. When I shoot with the D7000 I shoot with a 15mm fisheye since it grabs the most sky out of the front door of the house. I usually stop the lens down around F8 to F11 with an ISO speed of 200 and a shutter speed of 3 seconds or so. On the D800 it is the same but with a 20mm focal range everything else the same. On the D800 I have noticed that it takes pictures fast enough after the shutter trigger is pressed that you can catch lightning even after it has started happening vs with the D7000 hope that you catch the event after the shutter trigger has been pressed.

I am still working on getting my Camera Axe a faster photo transistor to capture the lighting with. Once I either track one down locally or get it online I'll end up mounting that behind the viewfinder so it will only be triggered when an increase in brightness occurs.

Here is a link to some of my images. http://www.flickr.com/photos/macsavageg4/sets/72157629961919653/

Zoran asks.....

"How can i shoot lightnings? I mean what is the best procedure to do so for the D7000?"

There are a whole bunch of things to consider when you want to photograph lightning..........

The first is......where to put the camera, (and yourself), to minimize the possibility of being struck by lightning. I have given quite a bit of thought to that subject, as I too am interested in taking lightning pictures. One pretty good place, (and pretty safe, ordinarily)......is to have your tripod with camera, set up near a window (that can be opened), in a large downtown building, (such as a hotel, possibly); the problems here being........the ambient light created by the rest of the city, etc, plus, you are only going to be able to photograph the sky in one direction. ( It's usually pretty tricky trying to anticipate where the lightning is going to occur )

Another even better place to photograph from, and usually pretty safe, is to shoot from a car window; surprisingly enough, cars don't seem to get struck by lightning very often, and even when they are struck by a lightning bolt, the occupants are usually not harmed; ( it's a very good idea NOT to be in direct contact with any of the car's metal parts during a storm !)

The problem with cars though, you obviously can't use a conventional tripod. There are any number of of products made to facilitate attaching a camera to an open car window, and they "vary" widely in price, usefulness, and "practibility". Kirk Enterprises makes one of the very best window mounts, (but like all of Kirk's products, it isn't "cheap"); ( useful & practical, very much so, but NOT cheap) Another VERY GOOD window mount has the very strange name, "Grufwin" (or something close to that) It's made by a professional photographer named "Leonard Rue"; (unfortunately, when I attempted tho contact Mr. Rue, I was informed that the website was "down" for "overhaul", (or some such), while Mr. Rue is "on safari".........(presumably in darkest Africa) Had I been able, I thought of leaving Mr. Rue a message, mentioning that I certainly hoped his photographs from his "safari" would turn out to be MUCH better than than his photographs of his "gadget" that a very nice fellow had up for auction on Ebay; (otherwise, I feared that his :"safari" might become a huge "boondoggle", as regards the demand for his pictures.) Not withstanding the terrible photo on eBay, I ended up "winning" the auction, and when I received my "grufwin", I can now attest that it is a "superlative" piece of equipment, It "works" even better than I had hoped, and I would highly recommend it to anyone needing a very stable window mount for a heavy D SLR with a heavy lens mounted. ( Even though it does look suspiciously like Kirk's great window mount ) ( But who knows.......maybe Kirk's mount was "inspired" by Mr. Rue's ! )

Probably the very BEST venue (from a safety standpoint at least) for observing and photographing lightning, is from a large, "open" cave. ( the main problem here being "accessibility".............)

But hey..........you see a LOT of fantastic shots of lightning here and there, mostly on the internet; they all have one thing in common...........they were ALL taken by sharp, "innovative" people, who are able to overcome the "obstacles";

Having just mentioned all of that.........when you are REALLY ready to commit to making great lightning shots.........there is one more VERY key piece of equipment you will need to make very many (or any) great shots, very often..........it's a small electronic "gadget" that attaches to your D-SLR and operates the shutter release when it"detects" a lightning bolt; there are a bunch of makes available; I personally have a "favorite", but I don't like to mention brand names, particularly on a forum dedicated to one "brand" of camera.

Correlli gave some good advice. Some people also turn Active D-Lighting OFF so it doesn't affect the image you're trying to get.

Just be wise. Lightning can strike you from up to 20+ miles away. People die that way all the time here in Florida. The saddest cases are the kids out playing soccer, baseball, etc. and never thought they were in danger.

I usually use S mode and just keep taking pics at like 5 second exposures or whatever it is letting me do. Bulb is probably a better one, but I can imagine some overexposure using that...would depend on your setting like said above.

Just FYI at Nikon one can download the product manuals for quick reference...

http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13948

And an App can be had to load the manual to your

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/manual-viewer/id468999172?mt=8

Thanks Correlli, I could have looked it up whenever I wanted to shoot lightning however you saved me (and the OP) time. He and I are too lazy to use Google. ;- )

All Nikon DSLR's with M (manual) or S (shutter priority) have Bulb. Just keep turning your shutter speed down until you see it.

Page 71 & 73 in the D7000 manual. You must be in M or manual mode. It is after the 30sec shutter speed.

Thanx a lot, im not in front of the camera right now (D7000) but i don't think it has a B (bulb) option!

First of all: make sure your position is safe, so you don't get struck by lightning.

Get a good tripod.

Use some low ISO (e.g. 100 or 200). Put the camera in manual mode, so you can control both aperture and exposure time. Make sure the camera is not set on Auto-ISO. For the aperture I would start with 5.6 or 8. The exposure time depends on the ambient light. It does make a huge difference if you take lightnings in a city or out in the wild.

Do some test shots until you find a good balance between exposure of the foreground and getting enough time to increase the chances to actually get some lighning in the image. I usually try to get to 10 - 30 seconds exposure. But make sure that during one exposure you don't get too many lightnings (they might over-expose the image). If you really want an image with many lighning bolts in it you might still stack images during post processing (gives you more control).

There is one setting that you can use to keep the shutter open as long as you like: B (stands for bulb) in manual mode. But it only keeps the shutter open as long as you press the shutter button. If you want to use this I would really recommend to get a remote control, so you don't need to touch the camera.

It is some try and error but this is the nice thing about digital: you can see the result right away and correct if required.

Hope this helps.

How can i shoot lightnings? I mean what is the best procedure to do so for the D7000?
Is there some setting so that i can leave the shutter open as long as i like and close it on a click?

SquamishPhoto said:
ding!ding!ding! :)

Thats my guess too.

As I once again crawl under a rock, that's probably been my problem with the auto focus, I've always left it locked.

Edited to add:
Guess I misunderstood the lock focus thing. I just went out and shot with it unlocked and was unable to move my focus point.

PB PM said:
Is the focus selector lock on by any chance?

ding!ding!ding! :)

Thats my guess too.

SmoCat said:
Hi,

have anyone heard of "stuck" focus points? My D7000 focus point in modes P,M,A and S is stuck off-centre towards the left and nothing I do seems to be able to fix it. It works fine in Auto, U1 and U2...?

cheers,
Et

Is the focus selector lock on by any chance?

Hi Smocat,

This sounds suspiciously like you need to RTFM as it seems like a settings issue. Have you done a two button reset?

Hi,

have anyone heard of "stuck" focus points? My D7000 focus point in modes P,M,A and S is stuck off-centre towards the left and nothing I do seems to be able to fix it. It works fine in Auto, U1 and U2...?

cheers,
Et

Hi,

I tend to use the single focus point and the AF-S 'mode', but then, I do a lot of portraiture.

There's a lot of stuff in these cameras. I play with the settings every day. It's a hoot.

My best,

Mike

Swame

The advice given by TaoTeJared is the soultion that you need to investigate.

The relation between aperture slected and DOF is the answer to your problem, as stated by TTJ, it is not auto-focus points.

Without going into a photo teaching session, wide open apertures [1.8] give you shallow DOF, and stopping the lens down [f5.6, or smaller] will give you deeper DOF allowing more of your subject to be in focus.

to quote TaoTeJared: Your Depth of Field is [I removed "probably"] your issue and not the AF points. At f1.8 and 5 feet (1.5m) away from your subject you only have 5 inches of focus (aprox 12cm). At F5.6 = 1 ft 5 inch (42cm), F8 = 2 feet (60cm).

@swame_sp:

To expand on casperwb's comment above:

1) To change the number of focus points, press and hold the AF mode button (left side of the body), then rotate the sub-command dial (FRONT of the camera). You can verify the change by looking at the top LCD.

2) In AF-S mode, you can only change the number of points between one and AUTO. You need to be in AF-A or AF-C mode to have the full AF area selection (single, dynamic 9, d21, d31 and 3D). To change the focus mode, press and hold the AF mode button then rotate the main-command dial (REAR of the camera).

3) When manually moving the center focus point, the viewfinder will only show ONE of the selected focus points (i.e., the center point). Be sure to disable to 'focus selector lock' select the center focus point.

4) You can press the INFO button to see the positions of ALL of the focus points on the rear LCD, not just the center point shown in the viewfinder.

5) The menu item a6 ("Number of focus points") can be used to limit the number of selectable CENTER point positions, from 39 positions to 11 positions. I.e., when set to AF11, the multi-selector dial can be used to place the center point to only one of 11 positions instead of 39. This setting can be useful to quickly move the center point from one side of the frame to another. On the flip side, if you want to be able to fine-tune your CENTER point position, select AF39 instead.

6) This a6 setting does not limit the number of focus points actually used by the AF (which is determined by bullet #1 above). E.g., you can set AF11 to quickly select one of the 11 center points, with the AF area set to 21-point dynamic focusing.

Okay i think i know what you are talking about.

He means, using the a pair of focus point working as one focus point if that makes sense.

D200 had this option. Don't remember what it was called though.

The focus brackets could have been composed of a couple of focus points.

something like this:

http://www.digitalreview.ca/cams/pics/NikonD200_AFpoints.jpg

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond90/page5.asp

casperwb said:...
rotating the main [rear] dial will change AFA/AFC etc.

+1 for TaoTeJared's advice on DOF

That's a setting which I'm already aware of, the camera is already in AF-A and the number of AF point is set to 39. As mentioned above I could only see one point even before focusing an object. Number of focus points is set as AUTO and 39 points on it, that's what the top LCD shows now.

Still could not get many points to be used for focussing. Am i missing something here?

TaoTeJared said:
Your Depth of Field is probably your issue and not the AF points. At f1.8 and 5 feet (1.5m) away from your subject you only have 5 inches of focus (aprox 12cm). At F5.6 = 1 ft 5 inch (42cm), F8 = 2 feet (60cm).

When I put the camera in Auto mode, while focusing it brings up various points and then choose on a random point on it takes a picture. When I do it A mode, only point is visible before and after focusing. Not sure what the settings could be. Thanks.

jerl said:
I'm not sure about what you mean for your second. Presumably in low-light situations, you are shooting wide open at 1.8, so you can't have everything in focus no matter what your mode is. The only exception is if you are shooting a scene where everything is at infinity (or at least 30 feet away or so).

So is that like if I'm shooting a far away scene that's about 50 feet away, I could get everything sharp with f1.8?

macsavageg4 said:
I think this is what you are talking about for adjusting it back to where it needs to be.

It's already as 39 points.

Changing the mode to Auto gets me various points while focusing.

swame_sp said:
Hello All,

I have two questions here about D7k, I remember making some settings change and after that in A and S mode I could only ONE AF point, with all different modes of AF-A or AF-C. Also the number of points is more than one (Dynamic array). How to get the multiple point focus back?

- Also what would be the best mode to get everything in a frame to be in focus in a low light (D7k + 35mm f1.8)?

At the front of the camera, just underneath the lens release button is the autofocus switch, small lever that turns auto focus on and off.

In the middle of the switch is a button, while depressing the button [hold it down] rotate the sub command dial, the wheel to the front of the camera, observer the lcd on the top of the camera, and you will see the area mode change.

rotating the main [rear] dial will change AFA/AFC etc.

+1 for TaoTeJared's advice on DOF