DSLR focus

[groberts 286]

is there any secret to getting good focus when imaging the sun with a DSLR - I find it very tricky?  

[Cornelius Varley 2,756]

Take a photo or use live view at magnification, check the focus, adjust if necessary, take another photo etc etc..... 

[David Smith 7,340]

For my DSLR images I tend to just use live view image on the camera LCD for focusing. Find a sunspot or group thereof and then zoom in to 10x. 9 times out of 10 I can get good focus using this method, the exception tends to be if the spots are very small / non-existent and / or the seeing is really bad. When either of these two conditions occurr then I hook the camera up to the laptop and use EOSUtils Live View on the larger screen.

[xtreemchaos 14,570]

i use the eos utils 99% of the time, you can tell when i havent cos my images are off focus,my eye sight is too poor for the camera LCD . clear skys and goodluck on the 9th.charl.

[Psychobilly 7,133]

I'm lucky because my "scope" is a 600/f4L IS USM Lens so provided there is a sunspot visible I just let the Cameras AF take care of it...

I get better results using liveview AF which uses the imaging sensor to do the focusing. Combined with Focus Priority shutter release it seems to work quite well...

Peter...

 

[groberts 286]

Thank you - I have been trying much of what's suggested but still struggling.  Just wondered if I was missing a trick, so will have to persevere as suggested.

[paulastro 5,581]

Yes, as Cornelius and others have mentioned, live view and then upping  the magnification works best.  I would also say that if you are taking single frames as I do, you will have to take many frames to get one that actually turns out to be in focus.  I usually get through  around 100 frames at least when I take  a single sunspot in white light, and out of those only a handful  will be any good at best.  Of course this is because of the variable seeing, NOT because the image wasn't in focus on the magnified live view image.  It's easy to understand why the method of choice is to take video files and stack the best images.