In fact, I returned to the BackyardEOS site to double-check it supported focusing. Indeed. 'Live Full Width Half Maximum feedback...' I noted the image on the Frame & Focus information tab. Hey! Look at that. A star with a diffraction pattern like that produced by a Bahtinov. Oh. Does that mean you have to use one? Or should? I briefly snooped the site to see if I could download the manual... Hmmm. 30-day trial.
While at Steve Richards's site, I noted he referred to an application by the late Niels Noordhoek called the Bahtinov Grabber that analysed the diffraction pattern and helped one focus. It would be interesting to try this little Windows application. Assuming I could produce the diffraction pattern clearly...
Over at Jerry Lodriguss's fantastic astrophotography site, on his Focusing Methods page, he touched upon all aspects of the subject. Techniques, tricks, and tools. And then he got into some software solutions. Images Plus and DSLR Focus were commercial products and fairly expensive.
I took a look at Hocus Focus by Gregory Pruden but, as promising as it looked, learned that it's really suited to video cameras or still cameras that can output video. And, of course, the video has to be captured with some more hardware before getting into the computer. A frame grabber. Probably not an option.
Somewhere in my travels I noted something that talked about the focusing feature of EOS Utility. What? Hello? I did a bit of digging and, viola, there it was. Did some more digging and then it dawned on me. I knew about this. But had forgotten it! I even found it documented in my burgeoning 40D quick reference guide. Ha!
Perhaps I forgot for being overwhelmed. Or not having used the software much. Or used recently. Doesn't matter. I was happy to rediscover the feature. I reviewed the operation in Live View and tested it. Good. Another compelling reason to use the EOS Utility as much as possible when shooting the sky. No touching the lens!
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Noordhoek's site seems to be down. Oh dear.
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