APT live view focus

[Anthonyexmouth]

Can anyone help me. When I try and focus on screen with APT and my canon 760d with my lenses I can never see any stars. At best I can find Venus or a distant street lamp to focus on. Whenever I see YouTube videos no-one seems to have this problem. Any idea where I'm going wrong or is it just my kit. 

[Cornelius Varley]

You might need to increase the ISO rating.

[alacant]

11 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

focus on screen with APT

Hi. ATM using APT live view with short focus lenses, you'll have to wait for the moon to to rise to be able to focus at infinity. Another trick is to focus on the horizon in daylight -or the most distant object you can see, a km or so is ok- then tape the manual focus ring to prevent it twisting.

HTH

[RolandKol]

Check your F Stop

Full ZOOM IN,
MAX ISO, max Exposure, - also you can try to apply Auto Stretch option (button at the bottom of the histogram on APT). 

Do not forget to switch off Live View before taking testing subs and maybe... it will help... will depend on light pollution level. 
It has not helped me in Woolwich.... was made to use the method mentioned by alacant

 

[mikeyj1]

well I can focus with the 1300d via apt liveview, with iso at 3200.  need a bright star of course, and you need to be close to focus, or you won't see anything.   this is reasonable tutorial from you tube

 

 

[spillage]

Been a while using APT with a dslr but what time have you set for the exposure.

[Anthonyexmouth]

1 hour ago, Cornelius Varley said:

You might need to increase the ISO rating.

APT settings say its maxed. do i need to do it on the camera also? i thought the software was supposed to control it all. 

[spillage]

Try using ISO800 and exposure of 2 seconds. If you are using a mask for focus it might be worth just using single shots, check focus, adjust and then take another shot.

[Alien 13]

Never used APT but on my flip out camera screen I can get live view to show thousands of stars even very faint ones.

ISO 3200.

Shutter speed 20 seconds not bulb.

Play with the Live View exposure simulation settings.

Focus initially on a reasonably bright star in the FOV then zoom in X5 then X10  and pick a very dim one to get final focus.

The comment about focus has to be close to see anything is very true and can be used in the final iteration by getting a dim star to blink on/off with the slightest adjustment.

Alan

[Anthonyexmouth]

Have no problem on the camera screen but can only see something really bright like Venus on APT. 

[almcl]

3 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

When I try and focus on screen with APT and my canon 760d with my lenses I can never see any stars. 

I have that problem with my 700d and 200 mm lens.

Within APT I set ISO 12800, max aperture, pointing at a bright star and with manual focus mode set close to infinity, take a 5 sec shot.  Examine the result (fit to screen preview).  Take a careful note of where the bright star is then switch to Live view and move the box so that it's centred on the (probably out-of-focus) star.  Zoom to x10 in live view and adjust focus manually for smallest star.  Take another shot, then try a Bahtinov mask shot and then use the Bahtinov aid to check the result. 

Never had much success with the focus aid in APT so hope someone else can suggest a work flow for that.

[Anthonyexmouth]

Fingers crossed the skies will clear and I'll have another play tonight. Got my new skymax 90 and asi290 to play with as well so probably gonna have this cloud camp over me all night

[Alien 13]

9 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Fingers crossed the skies will clear and I'll have another play tonight. Got my new skymax 90 and asi290 to play with as well so probably gonna have this cloud camp over me all night

Looking forward to see the results you get with the skymax.

Alan

[Anthonyexmouth]

2 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

Looking forward to see the results you get with the skymax.

Alan

Well, it's on the mount. Rdf aligned and waiting to polar align. Not a cloud in the sky so we'll see what happens, new scope and new camera, what could go wrong?

[Anthonyexmouth]

Oh and I've never done any planetary photography, no idea what to do with this capture software.

[Anthonyexmouth]

Well surprise, I've no idea what to do with fire capture and also, holy balls it's hard to focus, Judy looking at the scope makes it shake. 

[Alien 13]

1 hour ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Well surprise, I've no idea what to do with fire capture and also, holy balls it's hard to focus, Judy looking at the scope makes it shake. 

I think you should start off with the DSLR attached, think of the scope as a long FL camera lens... I can use mine on a std camera tripod.

Alan

[Anthonyexmouth]

Little bit of wind didn't help, I'll put a bucket of lead on the tripod hook tomorrow to see if that helps. But yeah, I'll try again with the DSLR. Jupiter was fairly large with the asi290 attached