How to gain Camera Focus

[guffman999]

Im an amateur astrophotographer, and i can never seem to get the camera to focus while looking at the night sky. Im using a Canon 1000d with the basic 18-55mm lens

Any help would be much appreciated.

[JimStan]

Are you trying to auto-focus your camera ? Turn it off, and just focus with manual control. There is really nothing up there, besides the moon, that the auto-focus can grab hold of, and some cameras will hunt and hunt and never snap a picture!

To check your focus, either send the output of the camera to a computer screen or TV set, OR use the magnification tool in your playback mode to view your star images.

I am assuming that your Canon has the same tools available as my Nikon D-80!

Let us know if the advice is on the right track!

Jim S.

[Stu]

Are you using live view on the LCD display? If not, enable thus and then you can zoom in x10 and really make sure everything is focused. As said before, using manual focus is best

Cheers

Stu

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

[Dave Smith]

If you are happy to have a laptop outside, try APT (Astrophotography Tool). It gives the facility to remotely control the focus and with a large live view screen and much else besides.

Dave

[jgs001]

At those focal lengths, I use liveview (450d), find a brighter star, zoom all the way in and aim for the smallest dot. You need to set the camera to Manual everything, Bulb, and ISO1600 to even see the brighter stars. Then take a test shot and zoom in all the way to check it.

[earth titan]

If you got a CD with the camera, then check for EOS utility. With this, turn off the AF, hook up the camera, find a bright star and try focus on this. The camera will need to be on full manual mode.