Nikon D5100 (1 Viewer)

Hi, just bought the new Nikon D5100 to upgrade from my faithful friend, my little Nikon D40.
Took the 5100 out for the first time last night and am a bit concerned with a few things.

Having shot with the D40's 3 autofocus points for years, I have perfected the art of shooting a bird in flight with the middle autofocus point and I get some lovely flight shots.
Last night I could have thrown the d5100 on the ground with frustration as it constantly missed autofocussing on birds in flight.

I had the dial set to exactly the same as I use for my D40 and all settings the same.

My setting for my beloved D40 is very simple. I set the dial to No Flash, (I found the Sports settings didn't work), have everything else on auto and autofocus set to 'Still subjects' (which activates the middle autofocus).

The reason I upgraded was to get more advanced, sharper images as the Nikon D40 images were starting to look a littlle basic.

Having read lots of reviews, including Ken Rockwell's glowing review of the D5100, I decided to go for the D5100 over the D7000 for money reasons, plus I like light, smallish cameras. What camera? also gave the D5100 a 8.9/10 and a Reccommendation.

Anyone any setting advice to make me love the d5100 as much as the d40?
Thanks

I should also say that I don't need to change my lenses, I've a sigma 150-500 and a Nikon 18-200

cagney said:

Last night I could have thrown the d5100 on the ground with frustration as it constantly missed autofocussing on birds in flight.

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Try photographing during daylight hours.

RJM said:

Try photographing during daylight hours.

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When I say last night I mean yesterday evening ( 5 - 8pm) when the sun was still going strong.

Be patient. I went from 20 years of taking BiF pics with pentax to a Nikon D300 and spent bucks on the recommended afs 300 f4 and 1.4 TC. I was impressed with the quality but was missing some important shots....focussing everywhere but where I wanted and just when I thought is on the subject it would quickly go off again, huh. Go into the menu and look at focussing points and what options you have for centre focus. Sorry I don't have a D5100 and can't advise. Get familiar with everything inb the menu and don't just stick to advice. Use advice as a starting point only. Practise day and night. You'll get use to handling it and should learn to love it. I think the D5100 looks a beauty and have recommended it to a family member. Breathe deeply, smile and I hope you get it. Hope someone else can advise you too. I'm just getting used to my setup. (Got it in 2007)

Thanks Stoop, I'm going to try it out fully next week and try all settings etc. I guess with it being a step up from the basic D40, I thought it would be as easy to use as the D40 but just with better results.
Good luck with your D300!

Hi Cagney,

Stoops is right in what he says, you need to spend a bit of time experimenting but do some internet searches too. I went from a D40 to a D300 and nearly sold it after a month as I just didn't get what I was doing wrong and thought the camera was a duff. Its probably taken 2 years for me to fully get my head around the 'new' camera but even now I still get things wrong sometimes. I spent a lot of time in the garden taking the same shots with different settings until i got an idea of what did what.

Best of luck and i'm sure things will come together soon.