focus

[dirtyharry40]

Please help ?
Nikon D60,
My cat sat on my knee (very unusual, for my cat), just had camera out for a few snaps and it was by my side so i picked it up & put it on Macro (flower icon) to get a close up of cats head but it wouldnt focus so i tried shutter & still no good. In the end i tried the Auto setting and .... strill it would not focus at that point when i wanted it to, When my cat yurned around and settled, zzzzzzzz, guess what ? yup it focused (on Auto and took pic)
In laymen s terms what am i doing wrong / do i need to do ???????
Thanks in advance
PS if i dont respond it's because im not sure where ive posted this so plz, send help to harrison638@hotmail.co.uk
Once again A big Thank You:bonk:

 

[RobertP]

Moved from tutorials to talk P.

Two possibilities come to mind. The lens will have a minimum focus distance and it may have been too close. Or it may be that the focus points of the camera had no contrast to work with. Auto focus works adjusting the lens until it gets the best contrast. If there is no contrast it cant focus.

Try focusing on a plain wall and then try again on say a newspaper headline to see the difference.

 

[tijuana taxi]

Too close I reckon, try with other objects and see at what distance it starts to focus