Nikon D7000 manual Manual Exposure, Metering with Older Lenses

Chapter 4 ■ Getting the Right Exposure 115

while automatically producing a shorter shutter speed that provides the same equiva- lent exposure as metered in P mode. An asterisk appears next to the P in the mono- chrome LCD so you’ll know you’ve overridden the D7000’s default program setting. Your adjustment remains in force until you rotate the main command dial until the asterisk disappears, or you switch to a different exposure mode, or turn the D7000 off.

Manual Exposure

Part of being an experienced photographer comes from knowing when to rely on your D7000’s automation (with P mode), when to go semiautomatic (with S or A), and when to set exposure manually (using M). Some photographers actually prefer to set their exposure manually, as the D7000 will be happy to provide an indication of when its metering system judges your manual settings provide the proper exposure, using the analog exposure scale at the bottom of the viewfinder.

Manual exposure can come in handy in some situations. You might be taking a silhou- ette photo and find that none of the exposure modes or EV correction features give you exactly the effect you want. Set the exposure manually to use the exact shutter speed and f/stop you need. Or, you might be working in a studio environment using multi- ple flash units. The additional flash are triggered by slave devices (gadgets that set off the flash when they sense the light from another flash unit, or, perhaps from a radio or infrared remote control). Your camera’s exposure meter doesn’t compensate for the extra illumination, so you need to set the aperture manually.

Because, depending on your proclivities, you might not need to set exposure manually very often, you should still make sure you understand how it works. Fortunately, the D7000 makes setting exposure manually very easy. Just press the mode button and rotate

METERING WITH OLDER LENSES

Older lenses that lack the CPU chip that tells the Nikon D7000 what kind of lens is mounted can be used with Aperture-priority and Manual exposure modes only, assuming you’ve entered the Non-CPU Lens information in the Setup menu, as described in Chapter 10. If the D7000 knows the maximum aperture of the lens, you can set the aper- ture using the lens’s aperture ring, and, in A mode, the camera will automatically select an appropriate shutter speed. In Manual mode, you can set the aperture, and the analog exposure scale in the viewfinder will indicate when you’ve set the correct shutter speed manually. If a non-CPU lens is mounted and you try to set Program or Shutter-priority modes, the D7000 switches to Aperture-priority automatically. The process works because the D7000 camera body and other advanced Nikon models (from the old D200 on up through the D3x) have a mechanical linkage built into the lens mount that tells the cam- era when the f/stop has been changed. Less advanced Nikon digital cameras, including the D5100 and D3100, lack this linkage and cannot meter with non-CPU lenses.