For the past week I have been having problems taking photographs with my Nikon 3300. When I have found something to shoot, my shutter button does not press down. I know it can be a problem with contrasting colours and light, but sometimes this is happening in the daytime with lots of different colours in the frame.
I have tried turning it on to manual focus and that works half of the time, but other times it doesn't. I have tried changing the mode from P to A to auto to macro to evrything else I can think of, but sometimes nothing works and the shutter does not press.
Today I was trying to take pictures of rain drops hanging from leaves. For about 15 minutes everything was fine, I was snapping away happily and then for no reason that I can fathom, my shutter button stopped working. I tried the flash and everything, but nothing, so I came back home fed up.
Sometimes my camera will give me a question mark that lets me know that I need the flash or it's too bright/dark but there was nothing to help me today. I know it's probably a mistake that I am making, but could there be something wrong with my camera. It is very humid where I live and the lens often gets fogged up when I go outside so I have to use my camera cloth to wipe it. Maybe I have damaged the lens doing this?
Any help would be appreciated because it's frustrating the heck out of me!
Thank you!
There is a setting that will give you two options about tripping the shutter. On my Nikon D7100 the options are a1 and a2 on the Custom Menu. I suspect they are in the same position for you. One for AF-C (continuous servo) and the other for AF-S (single servo). On each setting you have a choice of allowing the shutter to trip only if Auto Focus has been locked, or to trip it regardless of the state of the auto focus.
Perhaps that's not it, but it is a common "problem" that I see. Is it with all lenses or just one? If with all lenses, I can only suggest you take it to your dealer to look into. Perhaps something about the lens contacts on the body of the camera. I see it is a D3300. Is it still under warranty? Might be time for a check up anyway.
@frankhymus thank you for your reply. I have tried to find what you mention in your reply but I can't find it in any of my menus. I am a novice so may be looking in the wrong place. I searched on google about allowing the shutter to trip on my model of camera, but nothing helped. Maybe my camera doesn't have that option. I don't have any other lenses to check if it's just that lens. @tigerdreamer thanks, I have noticed that close ups can be a problem and today I was taking close ups. However, it was working fine and then stopped working so I am not convinced it's because I was too close and I did try to step back and reduce the zoom. I am going to keep a record of when it happens and what the condtions are so that I can take it into the camera shop where I bought it and ask them to help. Thanks again!
@emma78 My bad, sorry. The D3300 does not have a "custom settings" menu, and so doesn't have this feature. I don't know what the behavior of the camera is then if you have AF engaged (on your lens, there is no control on the camera body) and focus isn't locked. I suspect, only suspect mind you, that in AF-S mode it won't trip if focus isn't locked, but it will if in AF-C (or AF-A which you should avoid like the plague, despite what Ken Rockwell has to say).
And like Karen said @tigerdreamer if you are closer than the "minimum focus distance" of your lens, you can't lock focus. In fact, you can't even focus sharply manually. For the old kit 18-55, that is about 11 inches or about 30cm. That's the distance from the subject to the plane of the sensor, not to the front of the lens.
@emma78@frankhymus Emma, hope I'm not coming in too late on this one. I also have the D3300 camera. All of these settings are on this camera, but just not on the Menu button. If you look on the back on bottom left hand corner for the "i" button, press that and it will bring up a group of several items that can be set/changed and the AF-C, AF-S and AF-A can all be set. Using the up and down button on the right side where the "ok" is, you can scroll to any of the different modes. The first one on the lower left row is the focus mode. YOu can select the AF-C, AF-S or AF-A option. After you select that, then you can scroll over to the next one which is the Area Mode. Just got to figure out which one of those works best. Hope this helps.
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Perhaps that's not it, but it is a common "problem" that I see. Is it with all lenses or just one? If with all lenses, I can only suggest you take it to your dealer to look into. Perhaps something about the lens contacts on the body of the camera. I see it is a D3300. Is it still under warranty? Might be time for a check up anyway.
Or if my card is full
@tigerdreamer thanks, I have noticed that close ups can be a problem and today I was taking close ups. However, it was working fine and then stopped working so I am not convinced it's because I was too close and I did try to step back and reduce the zoom. I am going to keep a record of when it happens and what the condtions are so that I can take it into the camera shop where I bought it and ask them to help. Thanks again!
And like Karen said @tigerdreamer if you are closer than the "minimum focus distance" of your lens, you can't lock focus. In fact, you can't even focus sharply manually. For the old kit 18-55, that is about 11 inches or about 30cm. That's the distance from the subject to the plane of the sensor, not to the front of the lens.