The Landscape Photography Book

Use Focus Peaking for Super-Sharp Stars

You’re going to want your stars to be really sharp and crisp, and while setting your lens to focus to infinity does a decent job (see page 137), if your camera has a focus peaking feature (it’s appearing in more cameras these days, especially in mirrorless cameras), you can get a more precise “next level” of sharpness. Focus peaking works when you’re using Manual focus (which is what you’ll be doing when shooting the night sky), and it aids in getting a sharp focus by highlighting areas with high contrast edges—the sharpest objects in your photo appear brightly lit on your screen, so you see exactly what’s ...