Beat your own devil, even now i am starting to think of getting a G 

As bro CY already mention, rule of thumb, focal length, e.g. 50mm = 1/50 sec or faster shutter, make sure you're holding the camera properly.
For some situation, if steady enough you might be able to compensate slightly slower, e.g. 1/40.

On DX camera, don't forget you need to X 1.5
So a 50mm will become 75mm, which mean your shutter speed need to be at 1/80 and above.

If you're using wide aperture like f/2 or wider, the focus depth or plane might be very small and slightly movement your focus may go out, if you're on AF-S, after you lock on, any slight movement might get out of focus or not sharp image where you focus as it shifted the depth, its very bvious on D7000, not sure because of the DOF or mp. You can try AF-C mode and you might notice the focus will re-focus occasionally after you lock on, (if there is any slight movement on wide aperture especially).
It affects your exposure meter reading, I've explained on the previous post.
Yes, the meter is your exposure meter, + is over, - is under.
Sure let you adjust even in manual, sometimes you want to alter the meter reading in different situationor condition.

My previous post have explained the usage, also mentioned on metering mode affectingthe exposure meter.

Orait will do boss

Don't worry, you will slowly familiarize when you play with the camera and the exposure meter; If you shoot in manual, some situation you may get under/over expose picture even when the meter shows correct, which depends on your metering mode (Matrix, Center, Spot). Or sometimes in certain situation, you want to under or over expose the picture, so you want to adjust the exposure meter reading (just remember to adjust it back later).
There is also Exposure Bracketing, which you can bracket the exposure (in situation where you have no time to find the correct exposure, you bracket it with 2 or more shot with different exposure); If you're interested, you can read up on this and try it out; It can also be use for HDR.

Yes, Flash Compensation is for Flash; you can try with your built-in Flash also. If you don't want the flash to be too powerful, you can lower the power (usually useful for Fill Flash situation so your subject won't have too much highlight).

I use Tokina 50-135mm F2.8, cheap lens only compared to nikon 70-200

oh, thats d common price we were quoted when surveying around Komtar area today, looks like my fren is better off buying frm KL, haha

n i got my DK-20 eyepiece at rm25 to replace my broken D5000 DK-24 eyepiece
DK-20 is cheaper, looks nicer, n seems tougher than DK-24
dunno y DK-24 so expensive(rm48) but d rubber so easy chip off 

btw, going to Penang Hill n Kek Lok Si 2mr to spam pics~ 

previously poisoned by 50mm f/1.4 and now 85mm f/1.4... it will never end =(

both is OK. all you need to do just bumb your ISO.
open the shutter longer, and if possible use larger aperture lens.
taadaaa.. you will get pretty decent photo in night mode w/o flash light. 

^
would you mind to share your setting? so we can analyze it for you.

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Added on January 6, 2011, 3:57 pmand the photo as well.

For stationary/non-moving object, no problem to use tripod and slow shutter speed.

For moving object, tripod is not gonna help you.
For these kind of situation, fast lens is recommended, like your 35mm f/1.8G, you can use wider aperture to compensate for faster shutter and lower ISO. If you're using kit lens, say 18-55mm, at 18mm, your aperture is f/3.5 (when zoom worst), to maintain the shutter speed of say 1/50 you need to bump up a lot of ISO, you might also need slightly faster shutter speed to avoid blur on the subject that is moving.
So, advisable to use lens with wide aperture; For zoom, go for constant aperture f/2.8 so you can zoom and still the same aperture.

Also depends what you want to capture, your focus distance, which will affect your DOF especially on wide apertures like f2 or wider.

I would suggest you to shoot group photos at a brighter area. No choice. If gear is the limitation, you may have to find an alternative location to shoot.

About movements, yes. Definitely you will get a lot of ghost image and camera shake especially with slow shutter speed. Either you bump ISO if you use a higher shutter speed. But, again, that depends also the amount of light available to you.

I understand your concern of having a more natural lighting so that your picture won't look so flash-looking. But just be careful so that your shutter speed won't go way beyond the safe border-line of camera shake (rule of thumb is 1.5x your focal length). If your focal length is 35mm, then shutter speed should be 1/60 or more. But that doesn't guarantee there's no ghosting, if your subjects are moving around. I've seen some people in wedding dinners, doesn't at least try to use flash, and rely on extremely low shutter speed, like 1/15s to 1/20s on a kitlens. This is a very risky move as you will most likely be screwing up all the beautiful pictures because of camera shake.

If let's say you are shooting a group of people, and if they are on the same row, single-point AF is good enough. No problem. Just make sure you set a smaller aperture so that most of them will be in focus Bear in my mind, though, smaller aperture means lesser light going in, so you have to find a way to compensate that.

Using a flashgun doesn't mean that the picture will turn out bad. You can try to diffuse the flash or reducing the flash output so that it doesn't look harsh. I once used to hate using flash too. But once you got a hang of it. It can deliver some good results, and you'll like it.

Bokeh/Amount of blurriness of your background usually affected by these 3 basic factors:

1. The aperture opening of your lens. (The larger the aperture, the shallower your depth of field, hence the more blurrier your background will be)

2. The focal length. The more you zoomed into your subject, the blurrier your background will be

3. Background distance from your subject (The further away the background to your subject, the blurrier your background will be)

Haha.. I'm not a fan of bokeh when shooting group photos. Sharp image is more important. To avoid my friends questioning me:

"Wah! You buy an RM3.3k camera but all pics blur blur one? My iPhone shoot even better"

If you're using on-camera flash, you can try to lower the power so the flash is not so harsh and snap from a distance where the flash won't be so direct; with that, you can compensate with your ISO to get your desired result. You can also try on-camera flash diffuser, or DIY your own.

For Flash Gun, you have many choice, like diffuser, direct the light source (instead of direct), use reflector, and best of all, off-camera flash where you can control more on the lightings. If there is wall or ceiling, then you can bounce, but since it's outdoor, I think this is not applicable unless you bring your own large reflector to bounce and soften the light.

For people moving, expression, interacting with each other, you might need shutter speed of 1/80 or depending on their movement; You can try out taking few shots and determine the "SAFE" speed to freeze motion, you know sometimes when people burst of laugther, the moment you want to capture but if your shutter speed is not fast enough, you'll end up with blur shot and the moment has pass.

If you want to capture more background, you can bump up more ISO to get more slightly more light. If you're using flash, you can use slower shutter speed as the flash will freeze the motion, the slower shutter speed will allow you to capture more background into the picture rather than just the subject alone. You have to really try it out to experience the difference, you can bump some ISO to compensate the shutter speed, so you can maintain the shutter at certain speed.

If you're using wide aperture like f/2, taking motion, interaction, etc, you might want t consider using AF-C, because when you lock on focus and waiting for the "moment", you subject will move and you need to refocus (if you're on AF-S), on AF-C it can refocus for your automatically. Depend on your preference, with AF-S, when you half-press the shutter, the focus is LOCK on and the subject move, you focus indicator still shows in focus, that's why you get out of focus shot. At wide aperture, sligth movement of depth changes everything.
If you're using AF-S, make sure you hold the camera steady/properly, act fast, focus and snap; Waiting for the moment with wide aperture might get high chance of out of focus when lock on in AF-S.

For group photo, you might need to use smaller aperture depending on the group, how they sit/stand; In single row, sometimes they may not sit and stand in complete SAME depth, so at wide aperture, it's quite risky. You can try f/2.8 which works for usual group shot, but also depend on your distance. This you have to try out yourself and determine the best and safe aperture to use, while not compromising your ISO being set too high.
For this group photo, you can also use tripod and use slower shutter speed like 1/30 (example), since the subject won't really move while posing for the camera.

I'm always afraid to help people shoot using their DSLR. Got one time during wedding dinner, was given a Canon 1000D to shoot. Because I never used that camera before, I have no idea how to set the aperture, SS, etc. What to do, had to go with 1/30s on AUTO, took a deep breath, and gently squeeze the shutter.

Shooting group photos and asking ppl to help you muz alwiz rmb about the focus point! Last time learned a lot of lesson dy, ask ppl help to shoot, den forget to set the focus point to AUTO, den end up totally oof, Coz the focus point at wrong place, den focus at infinity 

Try to use a higher shutter speed for capturing actions, say 1/100s to 1/125s. Depends on how fast they move, and you have to adjust the SS accordingly to cater for the movement. Nothing to do with the rule of thumb already when you're talking about freezing motion.

If you're shooting at 18mm, and everyone is jumping around like monkeys, you can't expect the image to be sharp at 1/30s, anyways. Even on a tripod.

On Tripod, no worry about shake causing blur, but you need to worry on moving objects. If the subject is not moving (e.g. people posing for camera), you can slow down your shutter speed a little but not too much as even when posing you cannot expect the person not move at all.

When shooting stationary object, using tripod, you can slow down the shutter as much as you want, so you can even use ISO 100, small aperture and use very slow shutter.

Yes, you can use continuous shoot to capture  the moment.
If you're on wide aperture like f2, some image you might get not sharp/not in focus if they happen to move out of the focus depth/plane. (example: when they burst of laughter, the head might move behind, thus if you're on wide aperture, the DOF is might not cover that depth).

You don't have to use f/8-f/11 unless you want many things in focus. Usually, for "general" group shot, f/2.8~f/3.5 is good enough, you may go higher like f/4~f/5.6 for more depth, but you will suffer in low light situation unless you have flash gun.
If you're outdoor in daylight, then you can use smaller aperture like f/8~f/11 or even smaller. Usually small aperture we use for taking scenery as we want to capture many things in focus. As for MACRO or CLOSE UP photography like flowers, since we're doing close up, the DOF will seem very shallow, so that's why you see mansurov's shot is using smaller aperture to capture more depth.

Haha, this call "Chiong Hei" 

What's tl, dr so KISS?

yaya...
i heard hoya HD is quite gd...
jz dat macam out of stock eh...

How much... ?

when taking group pic, best if u can burst few shots like 2 or 3. increases your chances of avoiding sleeping folks

Yeah... creative lighting. yesterday read some article about creative lightning..
I am so poisoned now.!!     
Commander mode
I am totally poisoned today.
no money for d7000. in spec wise does it make a huge difference??
Hmm.. I am not sure about MD-11 I think I heard some1 say it does increase fps.

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Added on January 7, 2011, 12:14 pmbecause I do feel kinda useless for me having nissin di622 markII since I can't do commander mode w/ my body.
thinking to sell it + my 35mm to grab sigma 50mm 1.4.

or another option is upgrade body to d90.

isn't D90 and D7000 fall under the same classification?
semi pro??
bro got advice regarding selling my d3100 and upgrade to d90??
I really2 want to try commander mode. gosh!

 
Later, I need to sell my nissin before grab sigma.
fuyoohh..
      Yeahh.. really I feel that fuyooohh
Hmm.. meaning if you use commander mode you can control a lot of flashes on the other hand commanded by pop-up flash can only control one??
haha.. Okay. I will )
so you will only 2 cameras??