About three weeks ago, I noticed I was having issues with my D5500 and the autofocus. The mechanism would just run back and forth through three or four cycles eventually stopping on a completely unfocused image. Switching to manual focus enabled me to finish the day. The attached image is the first shot of the day when I noticed the issue.
The specs: D5500 with my go-to lens, an AF-S 18-140 mm. For most of my scenic shots, I am using the "Point and Shoot" "auto flash off" mode. This has served me well for the 14 months I've had the camera/lens. Recently, I began dipping my toes into B&W images with the "P" mode.
A little experimenting showed that the problem seemed to be mostly when I had the lens zoomed to 18 mm and I was shooting a broad vista. If I pointed the camera at something close, or if I zoomed the lens to something other than 18 mm, the autofocus seemed to work. This was true for Auto or P modes.
I then tried my AF-S 55-300 lens and saw similar results: when zoomed at 55 mm and aimed at a broad vista, the lens would not focus. Any other vista or zoom seemed to work fine.
A took the camera to my retail dealer and he suggested that the AF-area mode default of Auto-area AF is the culprit. He said that Auto-area AF sometimes has difficulty focusing when there is a wide range of distances to the subjects in the frame. He suggested that I should select single-point AF or dynamic area (9, 21 or 39 points) as my choices for both P and Auto modes. Basically, he is saying that it's user error.
I don't buy his explanation because Ive been using the Auto-area AF setting for over a year with no difficulty.
So, question 1 is, Is my camera broken and do I need it serviced or is it, as he suggested, a user issue?
OK, assuming he is right, I am now using 9 point dynamic area for my shots. The second issue I've noticed is that this choice is not remembered. For example, I'll be shooting in Auto mode and I choose the area focusing method by pressing the "i" button, scrolling to AF-area mode and selecting 9 point dynamic area. That works fine until I change shooting modes to "P" then back to Auto mode. The AF-area mode reverts back to Auto-area AF.
I've noticed other things are not being remembered like the viewfinder grid display. I turn it on in Auto mode, but if I switch mode to P then back to auto, if turns off and stays off.
So my second question is, what do I have to do to get these setting to "stick"? Perhaps I'm assuming too much that I have some control in Auto mode? Should I just switch to P (or A or S) mode for general work?
I should mention that I've reset the shooting menu options and taken the battery out for 30 minutes or so.
Sorry for such a long-winded first post.