- Hi there folks, it's Matthew Saville for naturettle.com.
I am again in the middle of nowhere,
in the middle of the night, and this video is going
to be a quick tutorial on how to nail sharpness
and focus on stars in your nightscape photography.
(gentle music)
(camera clicking)
Getting perfectly sharp stars in a nightscape photo
is definitely the biggest challenge
in nightscape photography,
and it's the question I get asked the most
both online and when I'm teaching nightscape workshops.
So let's break it down, first and foremost, into two things.
You got to worry about things that could cause blur,
other than the actual focus of your lens,
such as camera shake or tripod shake.
And then you got to worry
about actually setting focus on the stars.
So before we talk about focusing,
let's talk about things that could cause your images
to be blurry even if you did perfectly focus on the stars.
Number one is having a wobbly tripod.
If you don't have a rock solid sturdy tripod,
you're definitely going to be hurting.
You're going to be,
it's going to be an unpleasant experience.
You've got to get a heavy duty tripod.
If you're going with a lightweight tripod,
you're going to have to use a two second timer
or even a ten second timer,
or if it's even just a little bit windy,
you're going to be almost completely out of luck,
because the wind will vibrate on the tripod legs.
If it's a lightweight two pound tripod
or something like that,
then it may always be a little bit soft or fuzzy,
even if you nail focus perfectly.
So get a heavy duty tripod.
You can buy them used for 100 bucks or 50 bucks,
or you can buy a nice heavy duty one.
The Slik 700DX is my favourite.
You can get it online for 100 bucks or so,
brand new that is, and then get a solid, solid head as well.
A solid head, if you have a solid legs,
but you have a flimsy floppy head
that just kind of slowly droops
then you're going to have trouble as well.
It's going to be just a frustrating experience trying
to nail sharpness on the stars.
So that's the main thing, wind and having a solid tripod
that you got to set that foundation
before you even start focusing on the stars.
Okay, so let's talk about focusing on the stars.
Now, I'm going to demonstrate with an old cheap lens
because I don't want you to think
that you need a very expensive ultra fast, ultra sharp lens
to get very sharp stars in your nightscape photos.
This is an old 50 millimetre manual focus lens.
You can buy them very, very affordably,
or you can get a brand new 50 millimetre f/1.8 lens
that has autofocus as well for general photography.
But let's get started and talk about focusing itself.
First, before we talk about the right way to focus,
I have to mention a few suggestions that I've seen online
that are very much the wrong way
to set focus on the stars.
One of those is focusing before sunset.
Focusing on a distant object
like the horizon or something distant,
and then leaving focus alone or putting tape on your lens
to lock focus then and then waiting hours
and hours and hours until it's the middle of the night,
and then hoping that focus
is still perfectly sharp on the stars.
Now this can work, but the risk
of bumping your lenses' focus,
even if you put tape on the lens, the risk is pretty great,
and I just don't recommend that method.
Another thing that some people have suggested
is you can autofocus on stars with certain cameras,
and again, it might be possible with a very modern,
the latest and greatest camera,
a very, very, very fast and sharp lens.
You might be able to autofocus on the stars,
but for most cameras and most lenses,
I absolutely recommend manually focusing on the stars.
Last but not least, you may notice that certain lenses,
on most lenses, have an infinity mark on the lens,
or they have what's called a hard stop at around infinity.
And a lot of people will suggest just rack the lens
all the way to infinity or to the end of the focus,
and you should be good enough,
quote unquote, for sharpness on stars.
You might be close enough for Instagram resolution images,
but you're not going to be nailing focus perfectly on stars
if you just set it to the end of the focus
or even if you set it precisely
to the infinity mark on your lens.
Unfortunately, that is lesson number one
as we get into actually how to nail focus.
Infinity, the mark of infinity on your lens
is not necessarily perfect for stars.
You might be just to the left
or just to the right of infinity,
and that's where we're going to start doing test exposures.
If your lens has an infinity mark,
start there, but don't trust it.
Do a little bit of testing just to the left of infinity,
just to the right of infinity and see,
zoom into 100% after you've taken your sample,
your test photos, and check and see.
Was infinity the perfect sharpness
or did the stars get slightly sharper.
A little bit more small pinpoint dots of light
just to the left of infinity
or just to the right of infinity.
You might be surprised to find, especially
on very hot summer nights or very cold winter nights,
that infinity changes or star focus changes
just a little bit from the actual infinity mark.
And as I hinted just now,
you might find that the same exact lens
on the same exact camera is also slightly different,
if it's very, very hot or very, very cold.
That's number two thing to worry about
or to remember when you're out shooting.
Just because you've memorised where stars are sharp,
and you say, oh, it's just to the left of the infinity mark,
or it's right on the infinity mark.
If you did that test on a very warm, summer night,
you need to redo that test on a very cold, winter night
because certain lenses could shift a little bit.
Even some of the latest and greatest lenses
can shift a little bit when you are checking,
when you're shooting in very,
very different temperature conditions.
All right, last but not least, what if you have a lens
that has no markings for focus at all?
It's just it has manual focus, but there's no infinity mark,
there's no distance scale.
A lot of modern lenses are going this route,
specially mirrorless lenses or kit lenses.
They just have no markings whatsoever.
You, unfortunately, are going to have to go straight
to the last method for focusing on stars,
and that is using your camera's live view.
And it's pretty impressive actually,
even if you don't have the fastest lens.
If you have an f/3.5 or an f/2.8 lens,
you can still focus on stars in live view.
The trick is to turn your in camera sharpening
all the way up to its maximum.
I figured this out years ago,
and I've been using this trick ever since.
You got to be shooting RAW,
because if you're shooting JPEG or shooting video
then turning your in camera sharpening all the way up,
will ruin fine detail in these photos.
But if you're shooting RAW,
the in camera sharpening doesn't matter.
So turn the in camera sharpening all the way up
and then go into live view with your aperture
at its absolute fastest, widest, maximum, brightest setting.
And your ISO turned all the way up,
if you have exposure simulation turned on.
You're going to need to worry about your shutter speed,
and your ISO as well.
And point your camera at the brightest star
or planet in the sky.
You don't want to put it dead centre.
You might want to put it right off centre,
around the rule of thirds.
Then zoom in, in live view
to that exact spot where you know the star is going to be.
That's the only way you can find a star
in the inky blackness of the dark viewfinder,
when you've zoomed into 100%.
People say, I can't see any stars.
You can see the brightest stars in the sky
even if you have an f/3.5 lens.
So you got to place the star in the centre
or near the centre of the frame
and then zoom in to where you know it is.
Now when you've zoomed in to 100%,
I recommend racking focus back and forth,
like five or 10 times, so that you see the little dot
on the where the star is.
It'll be a big circle, and then it'll get to a little dot,
and it'll be a big circle on the other side of focus.
So rack focus back and forth, go back and forth,
so that you can get a very good feeling
for where the perfect sharpness
or the smallest dot pinpoint ought to be.
Then you slowly dial it to just that spot,
and boom, there you go.
You've got perfect sharpness on stars,
and you're ready to shoot.
Okay, so now that we've set focus, let's shoot some photos.
(gentle music)
Also, don't forget that even
if you have a very rock solid tripod
and perfect focus technique,
you may still get motion in the stars
if your shutter speed is too long.
So remember the 500 rule, take the number 500,
divide that number by your focal length
and make that number your shutter speed.
Or use an app like Photopills with the spot stars feature
to get a more accurate shutter speed based
on your camera's resolution and your len's focal length.
All right, well it's almost sunrise.
Thank you everyone for watching.
Don't forget to click subscribe for more videos
and comment below if you have any questions
about how to get perfect sharpness
on the stars in your nightscape photos.
We'll see you next time, take care.