Nikon D7000 manual A3 Focus Tracking with Lock-on, A4 AF Point Illumination

Chapter 9 ■ Setup: The Custom Settings Menu 283

a3 Focus Tracking with Lock-on

Sometimes new subjects interject themselves in the frame temporarily. Perhaps you’re shooting an architectural photo from across the street and a car passes in front of the camera. Or, at a football game, a referee dashes past just as a receiver is about to make a catch. This setting lets you specify how quickly the D7000 reacts to these transient interruptions that would cause relatively large changes in focus before refocusing on the “new” subject matter. You can specify a long delay, so that the interloper is ignored, a shorter delay, or turn lock-on off completely so that the D7000 immediately refocuses when a new subject moves into the frame. Your options are:

■AF 5 (Long). The longest delay causes the D7000 to ignore the intervening sub- ject matter for a significant period of time. Use this setting when shooting subjects, such as sports, in which focus interruptions are likely to be frequent and significant.

■AF 4. The second-longest delay causes the D7000 to ignore the intervening sub- ject matter for a slightly less lengthy period of time. Use this setting when shoot- ing subjects, such as sports, in which focus interruptions are likely to be fairly frequent.

■AF 3 (Normal). This default setting provides an intermediate delay before the cam- era refocuses on the new subject. It’s usually the best choice when shooting sports in either of the continuous shooting modes, as the long delay can throw off auto- focus accuracy at higher fps settings.

■AF 2. Provides slightly less delay.

■AF 1 (Short). Choose this setting to tell the D7000 to wait only a moment before refocusing. Very high continuous shooting frame rates may work better when you allow refocusing to take place rapidly, without a lock-on delay.

■Off. Turn off focus lock-on if you want the D7000 to refocus immediately. This may be the best choice for general subjects, because it allows the camera to smoothly follow focus on a moving subject with no delay.

a4 AF Point Illumination

It’s usually helpful to have the active focus point highlighted in red in the viewfinder, although the flashing indicator does use a minuscule amount of power. This setting lets you specify when/if this highlighting happens. Your choices include:

■Auto. With this default setting, the D7000 will illuminate the selected focus point if it determines that highlighting is needed to sufficiently contrast the focus zone from the background.

■On. The selected focus point is always highlighted.

■Off. The selected focus point is never highlighted in red.