Are you asking why your camera will not focus on stars at night?

What kind of lens do you have? I assume its the one that came with the Nikon and in that case there is nothing wrong with it..The first two shots are not really razor sharp and I think that is due to your shooting at a low speed, hand held....Use a tripod but the real problem with all of them is that lighting is uninteresting and flat has no contrast..

I really love this pic!! Great lighting and composition..with attention to background which so many here seem to miss....a winner in every way!

To focus, the camera does a computer analysis of the light coming into it. When the image is out of focus the camera doesn't see much difference from one part of the image to the next. As it focuses it "sees" a sharper division between the bright areas and the dark areas and tries to maximize that effect.

When you look at a dark night sky there's not enough light. The camera can't find any contrasting objects to focus on. You need to turn autofocus off and wait 10 minutes or so for your eyes to adjust. Then you manually focus the camera. Of course you use a tripod and a remote release and don't bother if it's windy out.

Here's an easy to read article on autofocus... HowStuffWorks "How Autofocus Cameras Work"

This could be a great ad for Lightroom or any other photo editing program for that matter..really shows how important editing is,.,..,what happens after the pic is taken is nearly as important as the shot itself...These photo tools are absolutely necessary for serious and even semi-serious photography and this is a great demonstration of why...

Great shot but you know you are going to have points taken off for having the ant so high in the frame..But great lighting and subject..Must have taken a lot of time and patience!

You absolutely do not need more pixels ..what a great marketing tool pixels has turned out to be!!...most of it BS..
.. I assume you have a decent camera with at least 6 MP..,.That is all you need in 95% of the situations you are in ..marketing hype aside,,,

I would guess this picture is what it is because it was probably shot with a telephoto and the colors were enhanced with photo editing software..cant be absolutely sure but that is my guess...Get a program like Photoshop Elements for $80 and you will be fine..( Dont waste your money on the full Photoshop for $400 plus..it has features that are not needed for 99% of what most people do...) If you get some books and learn the program you will find pics like this are quite easy,.,.

Yeah but I didn't know the ant was even there until it crawled over in the middle of some rapid fires. I was really trying to just get the detail on the little guy as he climbed.

For those interested:

Well its a great shot anyway..and the lighting on both shots is great..interesting and eyes lit nicely..

Yeah it's night time and some times even evening shots that it doesn't want to shoot. It will focus on the thing in trying to take a picture of but then it doesn't beep to let me know it's ready, and no matter how long you hold the button it doesn't want to snap the pic. Even in situations where I was in a fairly lit parking lot at night it has trouble sometimes. It may just be something in the settings, such as spot metering vs center weighted focusing or something, idk. I have to play around with it more. I also have to figure out why it doesn't want to do bracketing.


I survived Zdayz 2013... (barely)

MMMMM. Dinner!

You probably dont have enough light for the focus system to lock on to something....and even in what you think is well lit situation,,. incandescent light is not seen as well by the camera as it is by the human eye...In that case turn off the auto focus and focus manually,,,let me know if this helps..

Some shots from the last Cupcake Meet

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3673/9...7dd2a175_b.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3715/9...9f11d6b0_b.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3790/9...467a0ec7_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7445/9...9615c2e0_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7423/9...69416848_b.jpg

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5535/9...fd395276_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7387/9...1d38616a_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7442/9...bfffb91d_b.jpg

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5465/9...e2e695ca_b.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3811/9...e443eb36_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7342/9...4a0d0958_b.jpg

I may go take some night pics tonight, if I do I'll post 'em up here for review :tup: