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Infinity focus
Submitted by Dave.g on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 23:34
Hi all,
Apologies if this has been asked before, but what is the best way to get a focus to infinity? I'm trying for dark sky (moon, stars) shots, I've got the exposure pretty much sorted, but an having a big problem with focus in both manual and auto. Camera is a HS20EXR.
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You need to select the narrowest possible aperture, or f stop. The higher the f number, the narrower the aperture, so the highest f stop you can select and this will depend on the iso selected and also the exposure setting and the shutter speed.
Viv
photogirl
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manual focussing on the moon should be easy enough but you really need a tripod to help.
when i want to get infinity focus for stars i find the brightest one and use that as my focus reference.
As Viv says, go for fairly high aperture setting, especially for the moon. i used to go to about f16 with iso 200 and a shutter of 1/250 as a starting point. Check the photo and adjust shutter speed acccordingly.
there are many other conditions to consider: heat haze, light pollution, whether moon is full (not worth bothering as dont get any detail) or crescent, if its high or low in sky.
just a case of trial and error.
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Hi
Setting infinity focus is not possible on a bridge camera in any meaningful way due to the lens configuration.
The best you can do is to focus on the furtherest object in view which should be at least 50 metres away. It will have to be done perhaps manually if the auto will not work because of low contrast and locked too prevent focus shift. it becomes more difficult when using long zooms.
As for focus on the Moon, most people find that it is possible provided there is some shadow for the focus system to lock on to.
Kind regards,
Chas.
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Thanks peoples, theres a few things there for me to try, watch out for the results
--
Dave
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when i tried some moon shots with my HS10 i had a problem with focus, i found setting the camera to spot metering helped focusing on the moon.