All these items, because of the fine mesh, can produce spikes also with short focal length. If you, like me, are not afraid to experiment, you may find simpler solutions. Meridian Flip clock.

Disable any form of image stabilization, as you are on a tripod.
Begin focusing looking for the minimum star size, for faint stars coming into view, and for minimizing the CA. How Can I focus on the stars?”. But by doing so, every time you touch the camera, the image will shake, sometimes to the point you cannot understand if you are focusing or defocusing. But even if you have a regular lens, you should not rely on the mark for infinity or the hard stop (which is often past infinity). He is most interested in deep sky photography with low budget equipment and in helping beginners along their journey under the stars. Releases. Increments of this bundle will contain bugfixes that are found during testing. The sequencing on NINA is good and fairly simple to use but has some weird restrictions. Pelican Case Alternatives of (2020) – Which Brand is Best?

If there is the Moon or a (very) distant bright light, you can try to use the autofocus on it and then switch back to manual focus before recomposing the image for the stars, without altering the focus. or ask your manufacturer for x64 drivers. Setting up free capture software N.I.N.A. Before you go, have a look at this short animated video I made to recap all the info written in this article.

Problem is most of those masks work only with very long telephoto lenses, from 200 mm on.

To have good spikes, you need to have a bright star in your instrument’s field of view, but also the width of the cuts must be appropriate to the focal length of your telescope/lens. Darkness clock and Deep Sky Darkness (DSD) calculator.

for the first time

All you have to do is try to get the pattern as strong and sharp as possible. My Focus Was Perfect On The Test Shot, But Now My Stars Are Blurry.

Final Tips For A Smooth Focusing Experience, Use A Ring For Guiding Scopes For Easier And Smoother Focusing Adjustments, The Number of Visible Stars on the camera LCD screen. in x64 architecture your ASCOM drivers will also need to be provided as x64. Here, you do not have cuts, but small squares: the spikes are a series of dots irradiating from the star and are fixed. Just get a focusing mask. You will have a slightly better chance for autofocus to work if you use fisheye and ultra-wide lenses: even if the autofocus messes up a little, because of the huge depth of field typical of these lenses, chances are your stars will look sharp anyway. This has the effect of increasing the “apparent” focus throw, as the rings are larger than the lens, and you need to rotate more to move from close focus to infinity. The version did undergo a fair amount of testing and is stable to use for your imaging runs. Luckily, Montes Teneriffe, just south of the famous Plato crater, at the northern edge of Mare Imbrium, does provide quite a lot of contrast even during the Full Moon. Get Started Bitbucket. While they may have subpar optical performances, old legacy lenses often offer a better manual focusing experience than many modern ones. Manual focusing on stars does not need to be a nightmare, and with the few tips and tricks presented in this article, you won’t have to worry about blurry stars anymore. Some modern lenses and high-end bridge and compact cameras have no hard stop for the focusing ring. If you want to create a custom mask, you can use this Bahtinov Mask template generator to make your own mask for the desired focal length. When manual focusing, it is better to look for the three tale-tell signs of a good focus. Automated focusing with ASCOM focusers using FWHM or HFD.

I found most zoom lenses have a, Similarly to the previous case, if you have a heavy. With the exception of a few artistic images, stars that are out of focus are a deal-breaker. Andrea Minoia works as a researcher in a Belgian university by day and is a keen amateur astrophotographer by night.

3:50 Camera5:20 Filter Wheel5:54 Focuser7:03 Rotator7:38 Telescope8:16 Guider9:15 Settings11:40 Astrometry Settings14:10 Equipment Settings23:50 File Settings26:20 Meridian Flip Settings29:53 Image Settings36:20 Sequence Settings38:00 PlateSolving SettingsThis is a video of the workflow I use to set up the free and open source capture software N.I.N.A.


In these cases, you are “focusing by wire,” so there is not a scale for the distance or the infinite mark on your lens. Using a Camera Lens. Bahtinov Aid - powered by the Bahtinov Grabber technology to provide focusing with sub-pixel precision with a mask! HFD (Half Flux Diameter) focusing method. One way to reduce it is to stop down your lens, but the focus also affects the amount (and color) of the CA.

“Help!

High-end modern lenses are also good at the “manual focus” game, but kit and budget lenses may be more difficult to focus and less precise . Most often than not, autofocus will hunt for the focus forever. It seems I cannot get the stars in focus. The version did undergo a fair amount of testing and is stable to use for your imaging runs. Magnify the bright star on the Live View. e.g. If you are using photographic lenses, you could replicate this effect by fitting a ring tube for guiding scopes on the focus ring, as in the photo. Photography Rules: 500, 600, NPF, Looney 11, Sunny 16 and more. With the Full Moon, the frontal light flattens most of the details on the lunar surface.

Optional: you can use some gaff tape to tape down the focusing ring so that the focus will not move when installing the anti-fog heated strip on the lens. If you are using lenses with focus by wire, make sure to disable the option to reset the lens when the camera powers down, to avoid losing the focus if the camera goes in stand-by. Large changes in ambient temperature can cause, If you are using a zoom lens, you may have zoomed it to make focusing easier, took a test photo to confirm focus, and then zoomed out to recompose your shot. Focusing Masks: A More Accurate Way To Focus On The Stars, DIY Focusing Mask For Photographic Lenses. High-end modern lenses are also good at the “manual focus” game, but kit and budget lenses may be more difficult to focus and less precise. The better you focus, the less CA you can see. The difference with the Bahtinov mask in the diffraction patterns these devices create. You may ask if there is not a more accurate way to achieve focus other than eyeballing the 3 tale-telling signs I discussed before. The focus throw is the amount of rotation needed to go from close focus to infinity: a large focus throw makes it easier to make finer focus adjustments.

Unfortunately some manufacturer still do not provide x64 drivers. As part of the sequence screen you can also configure when auto focus should kick in (after n frames, when temperature drops etc) but for some reason NINA does not allow you to change the auto focus triggers when the sequence is running.

Perform a focus routine.

If you’re using a camera lens, it needs to be on manual focus (MF) mode, as the stars are too dim and too small for the camera to use autofocus on. The rule of thumb is that the shorter the focal length, the narrow the cuts. If so, to brighten the image, increase the. (https://nighttime-imaging.eu/) to connect to equipment, and run through all the options to make sure everything is set up properly.#astrophotography

The beta and release candidate version contains all the new features, bugfixes and enhancements, that are going under a careful test in order to be released for a new released version. Select the luminance filter in the filter wheel. FWHM (Full Width Half Maximum) focusing method.

A very popular focusing mask is the Bahtinov Mask. Here, in fact, the sideway light reveals a great deal of details and craters, you can use to help you focus: try to get those features as sharp as possible.

Indeed, one of the conundrums in astrophotography is to get things in focus, and we have all struggled with this. The focus throw is the amount of rotation needed to go from close focus to infinity: a large focus throw makes it easier to make finer focus adjustments. Else, with a bit of practice and using the tips I’ll share in this article, you will discover that the difficult things in astrophotography are others . This is the latest stable released version of N.I.N.A. Here is a simple workflow for eyeballing the focus as best as one can. This allows you to have the best accuracy and results.

This, together with the increased size of the bracket, makes for a very smooth focusing experience. Related: 7 Essential Astrophotography Tips and Camera Settings. If you install N.I.N.A. If you do not have a live view, if you don’t have a lens that can be used to efficiently do manual focus or you do insist on relying on your camera auto-focus for this, then… No, Focusing on stars is difficult.

As I said, to focus, you should use the live view and magnify your target star many times, so that you can appreciate changes in its size and chromatic aberration. offers a broad variety of capabilities.

The toolset spans from choosing, framing, focusing, centering and imaging one or multiple targets and much more. We tend not to do deep sky astrophotography when the Moon is out, as the light it reflects back, washes out the sky.

What is Happening? As no new features are added during the tests, these builds are rather stable and should not contain any major issues for your imaging runs. Thus, the better you focus, the more faint stars become visible on your LCD screen. In this article, I will teach you how to easily nail the whole focusing process. Sometimes, at the exact focus point, you have CA of a color (say Purple) on one side of the star and of the other color (say, Cyano) on the opposite side of the star. N.I.N.A. Turn on the Live View. Created & maintained by Stefan Berg (aka Isbeorn) Versatile. Video Makers are used to applying ring brackets on their focusing ring. This cry for help is far too common on astrophotography forums and groups. To prevent this, tape the focus ring down with a small piece of gaff tape. But if you have all (or most) of the images blurry, your focus is changed and here are the most common reasons why this happens: Here are a couple of tips for improving your manual focus. Learning how to focus your camera for astrophotography properly is an essential step of the hobby. What Are The Best Lenses For Manual Focusing? When focusing on stars, you should look for these three signs to help you estimate the quality of your focus: This is the first sign you should pay attention to when focusing on stars. To focus on the Moon, use the Live View and magnify an area near the Lunar Terminator, the division between the side of the Moon in the shadows and that in the light.