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I was shooting at f4.5 shutter speed 30s for capturing stars in my photo but was not able to manual focus as we can't set the manual focus for stars.

I am using a 18-55mm Nikkor lens, what I get after the image is captured is a bad focus image.

Question: If i am not able to see the stars in the viewfinder then how can i set manual focus

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pre focus on a distant city light, or the Moon if out.

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Stars are at an infinite distance.

Failing to find a brighter similarily distant object (like a far tower with a light on it, or the Moon for instance), you can set your lens to infinity and hope that it works. In reality you likely will have to use a setting slightly less than the absolut maximum focus distance (how exact depends on your lens / camera combination and is subject to experience with your own equipment).

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Calibrated hard infinity stops are rare on modern lenses. And it is better that way - drift in the wrong direction can make such a lens fail to focus at infinity at all. "Soft" stops also cannot be relied on until you really calibrated them, and did so taking temperature drift into account. \$\endgroup\$
    – rackandboneman
    Nov 12, 2020 at 21:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ While that is true, the room for error gets larger the shorter the focal length. I hardly fail to manually adjust my fish eye to infinity without looking through. And with digital you can even take an image, review it, and re-adjust focus if needed \$\endgroup\$
    – planetmaker
    Nov 12, 2020 at 21:56

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