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Astrophotography requires perfect infinity focus

Focusing Tips (general)

Focusing by the distance scale on the lens is not even close to the precision needed to extract top results, even if one stops down to f/8 or f/11.

Or that the hard infinity stop—it might actually be at infinity (especially for Zeiss lenses), but camera bodies vary in flange to sensor distance, so infinity is frequently in a different place on each camera body, and sometimes it is visibly off.

Or zone focusing—it can be adequate for some styles of photography with wide angle lenses and some stopping down, but generally speaking it delivers results inadequate for precision work, especially with cameras having 36+ megapixels (a DX sensor at 24MP is equivalent in precision requirements to a 56 megapixel full-frame camera—tricky).

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Diglloyd Guide to Zeiss offers comprehensive integrated coverage of Zeiss DSLR lenses for Canon and Nikon. Nearly a decade in the making, it covers everything you need to know for every lens in the ZF.2, ZE, Milvus and Otus lines. Guide to Mirrorless and Zeiss ZM rangefinder lenses in Guide to Leica.

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Aperture series from wide open through stopped down, showing the full range of lens performance and bokeh.
Optical quality analysis of field curvature, focus shift, sharpness, flare, distortion, and performance in the field.

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