Help with Astrophotography

Well I finally am in a location where I can try and get some good star captures. I went out tonight and the results were sub par. I was shooting at f3.5 shutter 20-25 seconds and 1250 iso. I got pretty decent detail in most of the pictures but holy hell I could not focus for crap. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated. I am going to give it a shot again tomorrow night.

Set to Manual, crank to infinity, dial back a tiny bit, hope for the best and take a look at the LCD to see if you're close. If you can tether to a laptop, then you can near instantly zoom to 100% and check and adjust.).

With a zoom lens I know has little creep I'll zoom in focus zoom out and snap, check and go on with a sequence.

Sit outside for a good 20+ with no cell, no flashlight not even red to let your eyes really settle in, then with the camera OFF (so no green bar lighting up on the bottom or red dots flashing) set the focus manually through the viewfinder, then turn the camera on dial in the settings and start snapping.

Also watch the shutter speeds and focal length, you're shooting moving objects, a tad to much time can make it look slightly out of focus if it's not enough to really see the trail.

Thanks for the info.I will give it a shot tonight.

The tried and true method that works for me - turn off AF. Find a bright star in the sky. Using Live View, zoom in at 10X magnification. Now manually focus on that star so it's perfectly round and sharp around its edge. Don't touch the focus ring there after - shoot away.