D7000 Manual Focus assist

steventimothy

steventimothy

Well-known member
For macgregor or someone who has the D7000, does Nikon's manual focus assist work in movie mode? I guess it must. Rockwell said it's very accurate on the D7K and works with any AI (post 1977) Nikon lens or later. That's pretty handy!
 
I don't have a D7000, but I don't think the focus assist works in live view, and therefore not in movie mode either.
 
I believe what steventimothy is referring to is the arrow and dot indicators in the viewfinder that tell you which way to spin the lens to bring it into manual focus. These work very nicely in the D7000 optical viewfinder, but they don't appear to be available in any form in live view/video mode. This makes some sense to me because the autofocus system is completely different for live view/video mode and the camera would not know which way you need to turn the lens to bring in sharp focus in this (contrast) mode.

One-time autofocus is the best way to bring you subject into focus for manual adjustment thereafter. Hit the shutter release halfway and the camera focuses, then grab the focus ring and go from there. Of course that won't work with MF lenses.
 
matthew77 said:
I believe what steventimothy is referring to is the arrow and dot indicators in the viewfinder that tell you which way to spin the lens to bring it into manual focus. These work very nicely in the D7000 optical viewfinder, but they don't appear to be available in any form in live view/video mode. This makes some sense to me because the autofocus system is completely different for live view/video mode and the camera would not know which way you need to turn the lens to bring in sharp focus in this (contrast) mode.

One-time autofocus is the best way to bring you subject into focus for manual adjustment thereafter. Hit the shutter release halfway and the camera focuses, then grab the focus ring and go from there. Of course that won't work with MF lenses.
Click to expand...

That's true, but the arrow and dot indicators could be used to set focus in viewfinder mode with manual focus lenses, then a quick switch to movie mode to make the shot, with manual focus after that. That's still pretty good!
 
You can also just zoom in digitally while in live view, get your focus, and shoot. The d7000 LCD appears to be a lot sharper then that of the d90.
 
zergtherobot said:
You can also just zoom in digitally while in live view, get your focus, and shoot. The d7000 LCD appears to be a lot sharper then that of the d90.
Click to expand...

True. The digital zoom is very high magnification. Unfortunately it only works in standby, not when shooting. But definitely more intuitive than trying to use the focus assist in the viewfinder.
 
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