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Setting manual focus to infinity

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4 replies to this topic

#1
EddyQ

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I want to take pictures of stars so I want to set my focus to infinity. I found that if I rotate the focus clockwise (looking from live view), that will move the focus for farther away. How can I tell when I have moved the focus all the way to infinity?



#2
Nikon Shooter

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Define "infinity"!

The stars you will be able to photograph are no more than 100 000 light years
away — that's the diameter of our Milky Way — and this is quite under infinity.

Most of them are so faint that no light will be recorded in a proper exposure.

The usual way out of the problem is to remember that the DoF increases with
distance from the sensor and to set the focus at "infinity" minus a few degrees
of rotation of the lens focusing ring. This way, though you'll still miss some few
zillions stars, you will still have plenty to make a nice and busy star shot.

Have a good time!



#3
mikew

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Long time since i have been involved with infinity focusing so i dont know if things have changed, at one time a lens would focus past the infinity point to allow for expansion of the lens in hot weather,under normal use the lens would require a slight turn back to achieve infinity.



#4
EddyQ

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Define "infinity"!

Infinity in a hand held camera is normally taken to be the maximum the camera can achieve. Obviously I'm not trying to take a picture of the Big Bang Background Radiation.


Long time since i have been involved with infinity focusing so i don't know if things have changed, at one time a lens would focus past the infinity point to allow for expansion of the lens in hot weather,under normal use the lens would require a slight turn back to achieve infinity.

What I'm asking is "how can I tell that I have rotated the focus ring to its maximum". I have not seen anything in the D3500 display that even changes as I move the focus ring. On onder cameras the focus ring would stop at min and max and there was information on the lense to show the approximate distance (the infinity symbol was one of them). 



#5
ScottinPollock

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Most modern lenses focus beyond infinity. I have no idea whether there is a valid reason for this, or it is just laziness in the calibration of focus mechanisms.

So the short answer to your question is "you can't".





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