Star trail focus question

Samsonite

Senior Member
Most articles advise to focus to infinity for star trails, if focused to infinity, how do you get objects in the foreground to be sharp? For Example the rocks and trees that you see is many star trails?


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Dave_W

The Dude
Layers is certainly the easiest way but so is stopping down your lens.

Also, be careful with setting your lens to infinity. Typically lenses can go past infinity and you'll end up with blurry stars. In the daylight take your lens out and focus on a distant object and then see where the line on your lens matches up to the symbol on the barrel. Then when doing long distant night photos, use that spot on the lens and at the same time stop the lens down a stop or two. If you simply crank your lens as far to infinity as it can go you'll not be happy with the result.
 

RookieDSLR

Senior Member
Dave W- Speaking from experience you are exactly right. I spent almost 4hrs taking what I thought would be some wicked sweet star trails got back to post and ta-da all blurred out. So yeah just don't crank it to infinity!
Thanks

Jeremy V
 

Samsonite

Senior Member
So any object which is relatively far away for example half a mile, which i had focus on during the day would be focused the correct amount for use star trails too?


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Samsonite

Senior Member
Previously I would frame a star in my shot, switch the screen to live view, zoom in with the magnifying glass button and arrange the focus to make the star as sharp as possible, is this an alternative to focusing on something in the day and marking the lens?


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