where do i focus - lightpainting.

I'm west of Moab and I was thinking to shoot some stars tonight with some cool dead juniper in the foreground lit with a flashlight. I figure to shoot f/1.4 or f/2 so where do I focus?

I played around this afternoon and if the tree (12 foot distance) is sharp, the distance is blurry. If I focus at infinity the tree is blurry.

How do I shoot this? Do people always do composite images?

focal length?

but regardless, you gotta stop down a little.

24mm. But everything I've seen about shooting stars is at large apertures. I wonder what I'm missing.

Usually they are composites I think.

Yup composite, do one shot for the foreground and one for the background then blend in photoshop. Even with ultra wides it's almost impossible to get both in focus when the lens is wide open.

Shoot at infinity and then move them camera to meet the minimum focus distance. That's what I do.

Thanks for the help from everyone. I'm home now, but I posted the results of what I tried here in the photo sharing area:

https://photography-on-the.net …showthread.php?​p=18083045