How Do I Force My Camera To Focus Into The Specific Place?

This post is a part of our Q&A section. If you want to submit your question, please use the form in the Contact page.

Niran (Bangalore, India) asked: I have a Nikon D3100 and loving it so far. But, I have a concern regarding focus when I am taking pictures. When I try to focus, focus point keeps moving. How do I focus in the right place?

Niran, based on your question, it looks like you are using default Auto-area AF mode. I have covered similar topic for Nikon D90 earlier and same theory applies to you as well. In this mode, camera will pick the focus point automatically by selecting the object that is near to the camera sensor. If your camera moves during framing, it might pick up another spot for focusing. Your camera thinks that nearest object is the point of interest. When you press the shutter release button half way down, you will notice the focus point that camera is going to use lighting up in the viewfinder.

Nikon D3100 AF mode

If it constantly picks the random focus point and not picking what you want to be in focus, then you have to manually pick the focus point. And to do that, you need to change the AF mode in your camera setting. The AF-Area Mode option is inside the Shooting Menu (shown in the left picture). If you go inside this menu, it lets you select between the Single-point, Dynamic Area, Auto Area AF and the 3D Tracking modes. Single Area AF simply means that the camera focuses on the subject in the selected focus point only. In this mode, user can manually select the AF point by using the up, down, right, or the left arrow directions on the multi-selector button, which is marked by number 24 in the picture below.

Nikon D3100 Multi-Selector

Later on, if you open the picture using Nikon View NX2, which comes free with Nikon DSLRs, you will find Focus Point button on the toolbar. If you press this button after opening the picture, the software will display the focus point that your camera used by displaying red square. It is useful tool to diagnose the problem if you think your camera is picking up wrong focus point.

I hope I was able to answer your question. But, if you have more questions, please do not hesitate to write us back.

Keep Shooting!

I Write About Digital Photography

Hello Everyone! I write about digital photography but this post is more about continue my writing about digital photography rather than photography itself. It's been a while since I wrote my last blog on photography. I received few emails, facebook messages and comments about my inactivity and when will I be publishing my next blog again? But I didn't have any clear answer on when I will start writing again. Since last few weeks, I was watching random YouTube videos (vlog) and got amazed by the energy and the passion of few vloggers. After following them for few weeks, I got inspired and that pushed me to start writing again. I spent couple sleepless nights to upgrade my blog so that mobile and tablet users can navigate seamlessly and desktop users can also load page faster. Nowadays, you can't blog without supporting multi-platform readers. One estimate suggests that 67% of people do everything on their mobile devices nowadays. After updating my blog, I was going through my past blogs and found something to be corrected here and there. I have tried my best, but, of course, I wouldn’t be able to finish it all in few days. So, if you notice anything that needs to be corrected, please let me know and I will review them and correct them as soon as possible. I'm thinking to write at least two blogs a week for now and adjust it later if needed.

When I thought of writing again, I began to look for photos I took in the past, books I used to read and some of the blogs I used to follow and quickly realized that I have a lot to catch on. But I'm determined and ready to learn more and resume my blogging. I hope you will also share your ideas and work or post comments or question on my blog so that we all can learn together.

This is sort of come back blog for me but I can't end it without posting one of the picture I took of downtown Silver Spring, Maryland taken a while ago when I was learning long exposure photography. I took this photo from my seventh floor apartment balcony and I was very happy with the result at that time. But as I started learning more, I noticed that there were few mistakes which I could have corrected, foreground trees, overblown lights for example. But that was the idea when I started photography; practice, learn from your mistake and repeat the cycle. This picture is straight out of my camera without any heavy editing except cropping and resizing. If you have followed my blog in the past, you might know that I am not big fan of spending hours on the computer to edit pictures. Don't get me wrong, I also shoot in RAW mode and adjust colors and lights sometimes if necessary. I am not against the editing but I would like to keep it as natural as possible.

Focal Length : 16 mm     ISO : 2500     Shutter speed : 10 sec     Aperture : f/22

Please leave comments or questions if you have any. Waiting to hear back from you. Happy Shooting and welcome back to my blog!

Setup I Used For Night Cityscape Shots

I always wanted to capture beautiful cityscapes, specially night cityscapes, because of the spectacular view of buildings with different lights and colors. This summer, when I was traveling to Cape code, MA, via New York, I quickly stopped by NYC and got a glimpse of Manhattan Midtown in the evening. Then my next stop was Boston downtown and there I got a chance to capture Boston downtown cityscape at night. I am writing this blog post to share my experience and ideas on how I captured those shots. First of all, when you want to capture long exposure night shots, you must have to have a sturdy tripod with you. Any shutter speed slower than your lens focal length usually results into blurry image if taken handheld (without using tripod). You may also want to consider wide angle lens as well to capture wide view of cityscape which looks pleasant than only few buildings (using telephoto lens). Let me tell you briefly what camera settings and gears I used to get a crisp and well lit shot.

Gears I use during night Cityscape shooting

1. Tripod (You need sturdy tripod to handle longer exposure. I used Manfrotto 055XPROB Pro Tipod in these shots.)

2. Wide Angle lens. (Wide angle lens enriches the view of cityscapes allowing to capture great variety of subjects. I used Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens)

3. Any DSLR camera that supports BULB shutter mode. (Most of the DSLRs support only up to 30 sec of shutter speed in Manual mode but sometimes you need longer than 30 sec shutter speed and in that case you need BULB shutter mode which most advanced DSLRs have these days. I used Nikon D700 FX camera.)

4. ND Filter (It is an optional device if you ever want to increase your exposure time. I didn't use filter for these shots.)

5. Shutter release cable or Wireless shutter release remote (I use shutter release cable almost every time I use my camera on Tripod. This will help me to reduce vibration on camera while pressing shutter release button on camera. Some photographers use 2 sec delay method (camera takes picture 2 sec after pressing shutter release button) which also works great but I feel that technique bit tedious.

6. Finally, Timer (usually, when you are shooting into BULB mode with your calculated Shutter speed, you may want to use timer not to go too long for shutter speed than calculated. I used my iPhone stopwatch for this purpose.)

When you have all the required gears, all you have to do is pickup the location, compose your shot and snap it. Location is one of the most important constraint to choose right composition. If you miss the right composition because of the location, all your hard work goes into vain. When I take night cityscape shots, I try to include wide range of objects such as bridges, ships, cruise etc to add up variety to the scene. Here I have included three shots along with its camera settings; first one is New York City view from the Empire State Building and the second one is of Boston Downtown.

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New York Midtown (click the image to view full size)

Focal Length : 35 mm     ISO : 1600     Shutter speed : 1/2 sec     Aperture : f/11

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Boston Downtown (click the image to view full size)

Focal Length : 35 mm     ISO : 200     Shutter speed : 13 sec     Aperture : f/4

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I always welcome them and try to answer it back as soon as possible. Happy Shooting!