Went out on a rare clear night to a wetlands near me to take some photos of the stars. As it was so dark, and the stars are so small, I had to rely on the focus peaking function of my camera to tell if the stars were in focus or not.
I’ve got home and started to process the photos, and I’ve found out that despite the camera telling me that they were in focus, they clearly weren’t.
Hey ho, what’s a wasted few hours in the freezing cold between friends…
My camera is the a6400, and it has an option to manually set the focus, I believe that it’s the PRO mode, where you can customise the exposure time with a number and the focus with the lens thingy.
You maybe did not set things correctly, but if that’s the camera you have try tweaking the options so that you can set things like focus and exposure time manually. I mean, it’s the sky, you don’t need fast or dynamic focus or anything like that, all you need is a tripod and to point the camera up.
For sky photos I would set the focus as far as it lets you. Sadly, you will never be able to correctly focus stars because their focal point is just way too far, so manually setting is a far as the camera lets you should suffice.
Here’s a guide to take sky photos with your camera model, but should work with any decent one: https://realisticwanderlust.com/2018/10/16/photographing-the-milky-way/