AF Problem Solved (doh!)

I took my Z8 out to shoot wildlife for the first time. Well, maybe not real wildlife -- it was the Bronx Zoo.

I was in the bird house with AF set to wide area small and subject detection on for animals. In some cases, it was correctly detecting birds' faces and eyes, but not focusing on them. I thought maybe I was too close for the 100-400 to focus, but that wasn't it because I could manually focus on them. I left the bird house thinking, was it the camera? Was it the lens?

Neither -- it was the photographer. In pulling the lens out of the bag I must have hit the limit switch on the lens so it wouldn't focus on anything closer than 3 meters.

Good to know that A) that I don't have any expensive broken hardware and B) I really have to get out and shoot more. It's the kind of mistake I make when I'm out of practice.

It's really a doh moment of the day.

Born2Code said:

I took my Z8 out to shoot wildlife for the first time. Well, maybe not real wildlife -- it was the Bronx Zoo.

I was in the bird house with AF set to wide area small and subject detection on for animals. In some cases, it was correctly detecting birds' faces and eyes, but not focusing on them. I thought maybe I was too close for the 100-400 to focus, but that wasn't it because I could manually focus on them. I left the bird house thinking, was it the camera? Was it the lens?

Neither -- it was the photographer. In pulling the lens out of the bag I must have hit the limit switch on the lens so it wouldn't focus on anything closer than 3 meters.

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about the missed photos! I am sure I am not alone in saying: been there, done that! Happens to the best of us

Born2Code said:

Good to know that A) that I don't have any expensive broken hardware and B) I really have to get out and shoot more. It's the kind of mistake I make when I'm out of practice.

Click to expand...

I have done much dumber things than that.

Live and learn.

I once went on a hike and only when I started taking photos did I realize I had left the memory card back at the hotel. Fortunately it was a camera with a small buffer. I spent the whole day deciding whether “this photo” was worth keeping - I only had enough buffer for 16 frames.

Maybe that’s an exercise we should all do occasionally: take the smallest memory card we have, and pretend we only have a single 36-shot roll available.

At least we're past the stage when we'd shoot all day and then find the the film wasn't loaded correctly. I never did do that, but I know quite a few people who did. (The trick was to make sure the rewind knob was turning when you advanced the film.). I guess the Z8 equivalent is to set "Slot empty release lock" to LOCK.