Took astro shots at Great Basin, half came out blurry, now I'm split on autofocus vs manual

Was out at Great Basin National Park last month with my DSLR and a 135mm lens. Tried both autofocus on the stars and manual focus using live view zoom. Autofocus nailed the moon but failed on faint nebulae every time, manual was slow but gave me 70% sharp frames. Some folks swear by a Bahtinov mask, others say just bracket focus. Which method got you your first decent deep-sky shot, and did you ever flip loyalties?

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hollyramirez1mo ago

Forty bucks for a Bahtinov mask saved my sanity after three nights of cussing at a faint Orion nebula. My first decent shot came from tape on the focus ring at the infinity mark, because the autofocus kept hunting like a drunk squirrel. I flipped loyalties hard when I realized the mask is just a cheap piece of plastic that turns a blurry star into a clear diffraction pattern. Now I use it every time, even for the moon, because it takes ten seconds and never lies to me. The only thing slower than manual focus is arguing with your camera in the dark at 2am, so just buy the mask and skip the drama.