Using the Olympus 8mm for night sky photography

[HSakols]

I have the Olympus 8mm 1.8 pro lens that I use for underwater photography. I'm now curious how this lens performs using it for night photography. I notice the lens does not have any focus reference points. How am I supposed to correctly focus this lens at night?  Or is should this not be a problem being such a wide lens.  I figured, I would determine infinity during the day light and then manually focus the lens for night, but not having any focusing marks makes this difficult. 

[E.J. Peiker]

Take your flash light, turn it on, walk about 30 or 40 feet from camera and set it down, go back to the camera and focus on it and tape the focus ring and put the camera in manual focus mode.  Go retrieve the flashlight.  You are now ready to go all night all long

[HSakols]

Thank you. 

[TonyVentourisPhotography]

The flashlight trick works ... but there is another way.  You need to turn on live view boost mode 2.  This actually let you see the star on the screen so you can zoom in and focus.  It actually works well.  I've used the 8mm for Milky Way images and it's great. 

Live view boost is under the custom menu D I believe.  Second page. 

Just point the camera towards some brighter stars and zoom in your focus and you will be amazed at how easy it is to see and accurately focus on stars. 

[HSakols]

I just made the change to my EPL5.  Funny, I set my EM5 for boost mode for underwater viewing. 

[TonyVentourisPhotography]

Boost mode and boost mode 2 are actually quite different.  Boost mode 2 is really for super dark conditions and ideally tripod use.  The screen has tremendous lag due to the long exposure view.  It seems to be a half second refresh or something.  But you can see in the dark!