Why does autofocus on my Nikon D5100 take 30–60 seconds to work after startup?
Asked 2/28/2014
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2 answers
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My Nikon D5100 with the 18–55mm kit lens used to autofocus immediately after powering on, but now AF may not work for 30–60 seconds. Sometimes it starts working sooner if I take a shot or two in manual focus first. I haven’t intentionally changed any settings. This seemed to start after removing and remounting the lens, although I’ve done that before without issues. What could cause this delay, and how can I troubleshoot it?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
1
In d5100, the "Slot empty release lock" option is set by default to LOCK. Which means that the camera shutter does not operate if no memory card is inserted.
Therefore one may say that if there is a delay in the procedure of card mounting during the start up, then this will cause an analogous delay to the auto focus operation.
The cause of the delay may be the existence of some unreadable card sectors. In this case reformatting the card can solve the problem.
The fact that the camera works with manual focus, which was mentioned by mattdm, is irrelevant.
Originally by user26734. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user26734
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
A likely cause is the camera hanging up while communicating with the SD card during startup, rather than a lens/autofocus failure. On the D5100, the default “Slot empty release lock” setting prevents shutter operation without a memory card, so if card mounting is slow or the card has unreadable sectors, startup behavior can appear delayed and affect when normal operation resumes.
Try this:
- Back up your photos.
- Reformat the SD card in the camera.
- Reset the camera to factory/default settings.
If the problem goes away after reformatting, the card was probably the issue. If it continues, test with another known-good SD card to confirm whether the original card is faulty. The fact that autofocus eventually works suggests this may be a startup/media communication problem rather than a permanent AF system defect.
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