Quote:
Originally Posted by Huck
And let me ask you guys a question. During night shots, if I'm looking through the viewfinder, the camera has no problem focusing. But after it focuses it won't shoot, and it blinks the flash symbol at me. Then without moving or anything, I'll switch to live view and it has a lot of trouble focusing. Once I get it focused (or almost, as you can see in the first pic above) it will take the pic no problems, no flash. What I resorted to doing was looking through the viewfinder, focusing, then turning off the auto focus and switching to live view to take the pics. It was kind of a pain. What am I doing wrong? For reference, I'm shooting with a D5100, stock lens, and the settings were 100 ISO, 5.6 aperture, shutter speeds between 15 and 25 seconds depending on the shot, and an auto white balance. Suggestions?
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If you're in "M" (manual), it shouldn't be asking you to use the flash at all.
If you're in "A" or "S", the camera is basically saying it can't get a proper exposure without the flash. I'm not sure why switching to live view makes a difference though.
You can always set the focus manually. That dot in the left hand corner indicates focus (#2). Just aim the center on focus node on the object you want to target. It will light up once the target is in focus. Metering and autofocus will not work as well in the dark, even with the high end professional gear. This is basically why it's best to go manual everything for night photography. Your results will be more predictable from shot to shot. If you look at the exposure metering bar (#11), that too may shed some light on why it's telling you to use the flash.