My journey with the D7000

Thus far.

Two weeks ago, I finally opened the box and unwrapped my new camera. It didn't take long to get up and running but I'll be honest, I kind of know what I'm doing and going from an old, entry level camera to a big boy camera is a bit intimidating. There's a lot to figure out.

I won't go into the differences between old camera and new camera now. I'll reserve that for an upcoming post in case there are any readers with entry level cameras who are interested.

So back to night #1 with the new camera. It was late and pitch black outside so I was excited to test out the ISO capabilities. I tried to take some pictures in the house and to my surprise, they were all overexposed. I was perplexed but placed the camera aside and decided to deal with it later.

The next morning, I tested out the camera in the house with my Speedlight (Nikon SB-600.) At certain times of the day in certain locations, there is decent natural light but for the most part, there is not so I choose to use the Speedlight.

Test shots.

My attempt at outdoor photos that day ended with many overexposed, blown out shots. I did manage to get these ones of the girls. I was trying to get a picture of all three for a Father's Day gift for Rich. They started off the session exactly as I wished but by the time I figured out how to get a decent photo, they were disinterested.

But still cute.

Here is Emily. She posed this way and said, "Come on, Mommy! It's fun!"

Now, I metered in the camera and that photo is blown out. If you can't see where on her face, just check out the upper right portion of the picture. Her shirt should not look like that.

I didn't have much time during the week to play around with my camera but I started to realize that I needed to meter down to come close to correct exposure.

But even still, some photos were still greatly overexposed. Like this one of Allie. You can really tell by looking at her shirt.

So last night, I decided that enough was enough and I needed to figure out what was going on. I started reading more of the book that came with the camera. (I can't even call it a manual because there is so much information in it.) At first I thought that my problem may be with which metering mode I was using (matrix, spot or centered- weighted.) Nope, not the problem.

I continued to read and even searched the internet. Very long frustrated story short, my exposure compensation was set for +1.0! I never even thought to look at that because I certainly hadn't set it on purpose. Who knows how it ended up that way but the issue has been resolved. Hopefully.

Test shots of Anna from this past week.