The Digital Photography Book

How to Focus Your Lens to Infinity

If you’re going to try to shoot something that’s particularly hard to focus on (for example, let’s say you’re photographing the moon, or fireworks, or the Milky Way, or a lightning storm way off in the distance [and, by the way, that’s exactly where you want to be when photographing lightning—way, way off in the distance]), then you can set your focus to a setting called “infinity,” where everything way off in the distance will be in focus. There is a weird trick to “focusing to infinity” and here’s how it works: Start by focusing on something visible a little way in front of you, then switch your lens to manual ...