mark_anderson_us wrote:

Hi Guys

I'll be trying this, sometime this week with my netbook; however, forgive my ignorance, but I think I'm missing something. If I don't want to use focus blending, besides saving directly to the computer, what's the benefit compared to just using papywizard with the Merlin head. (I know the tethering is simpler too.)

The advantage and the reason for doing this is to implement extended exposure brcaketing using a wider range than the built-in AEB is capable of.

It seems to me the big problem is that no solution that exists today knows when the camera has finished the exposure and is ready to take the next shot. This means you have to try and figure out the longest exposure you're likely to have during the entire seqeunce (a pain at dusk) and then enter that as the time between shots with a safe error margin. So if I'm bracketing +1, 0, -1 and my -1 exposure is 3 secs, my total exposure should time should be 5.25 secs (assuming no delay for writing to disk, as most modern cameras can buffer 7-9 frames).

An exposure bracketing of 1/0/-1 is hardly worth bothering with if you are looking to do HDR or exposure blending for a pano - anything less that 2/0/-2 is not really worth bothering with as I understand it and one often needs more than that hence the development of support for shutter control plug-ins such as that for Breeze Systems' DSLR Remote Pro.

For this example, I would probably enter about 10 secs as my time per shot (huge error margin, but when shooting several hundred frames, missing the last one or two is a killer). This would be wasting at least 4 secs per shot, so if I'm shooting 400 images that's 1600 secs and a lot of light change ast dusk/dawn.

What would it take for Papywizard to be able to recognize that the camera is no longer busy and them move immediately instead of waiting for a pre-determined interval?

I think that's exactly what happens when using a third party program via a plug-in to trigger the shutter isn't it?

Is this a limitiation of papywizard or the plug-in controlling the camera? Canon and BreezeSys both have SDK's so if someone could write a plug-in that communicates directly with one of these products would it solve the problem. (If it will, I may consider having a go at developing it.)

Have you tried using Breeze Systems' DSLR Remote Pro via the Papywizard plug-in?

unfortunately no luck with dslremote. it always adds a -x option on the command line, which is not supported by many canon cameras. i tried to flind the plug-in source to modify it, but no luck.

i tried generic tethered and set it to just call dslreotetest.exe (don't need any of the command line options), but that fails to. it says shooting command '   ' in the log

so it looks like i'm totally stuffed, which is a shame because i'm so close to a solution. i don;t knwo if these are just bugs in 2.1.19

(EOS utility/autokey option is too flakey for me)

regards

mark

Don't know if anybody is interested, but I found the solution for the problem. In my case, it came from the use of the french version of EOSUtility : EOSBracket.exe was not able to recognize french string.

To correct the problem :
1) Open EOSBracket.ahk script with Notepad++
2) At lines 427 and 436 (on a total of 491) replace "Main Window" with "Fenêtre Principale"
3) Save and close script
4)Compile script to obtain run-time version (EOSBracket.exe)

Olivier
____________________________

EOS 5D Mark II, EF 17/40 mm f/1.4 USM, EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM, Canon PowerShotPro1, Merlin, TTL-232R,EOS Utility, Papywizard 2.1.19 / Autopano Giga 2

Thanks for the tip, Olivier!

Solaris wrote:

Don't know if anybody is interested, but I found the solution for the problem. In my case, it came from the use of the french version of EOSUtility : EOSBracket.exe was not able to recognize french string.

To correct the problem :
1) Open EOSBracket.ahk script with Notepad++
2) At lines 427 and 436 (on a total of 491) replace "Main Window" with "Fenêtre Principale"
3) Save and close script
4)Compile script to obtain run-time version (EOSBracket.exe)

It worked for me!

Many thanks Olivier

Papywizard Bulb feature only keep the trigger on during the exposure time; this is the B mode. It seems that you need the T mode, with one trigger at the begining, and one trigger at the end.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulb_%28photography%29

"Bulb, abbreviated B, is a shutter speed setting on an adjustable camera that allows for long exposure times under the direct control of the photographer. With this setting, the shutter simply stays open as long as the shutter release button remains depressed. An alternative setting common on film cameras is Time, abbreviated T, where the button is pressed once to open the shutter and again to close it."

It seems that your camera works in T mode. But Papywizard only supports B mode...

Skippysky wrote:

How do I set up for exposures of , for example, 60 seconds, such that I get one 60sec frame at each position
in the mosaic?

Any advice greatly appreciated,

Andrew Cool

www.skippysky.com.au

What camera are using?

ozbigben wrote:

Two possible solutions?

Hi Ben,

>Record an autohotkey script with two shutter releases and then edit the wait in between to your desired shutter speed or..

>DSLR Remote (if it supports your model) use the commandline utility via a batch file with a sleep command in between two releases (sleep is not a standard dos >command but is available in a resource kit)

The DSLR Remote path sounds viable. Question though. How is the resulting Bat file executed from PapyWizard at every position?

Is the same general method available using the free EOS Utility that comes with Canon cameras rather than forking out $175 for DSLR Remote?

Thanks,

Andrew

Skippysky wrote:

Hi Ben,


Is the same general method available using the free EOS Utility that comes with Canon cameras rather than forking out $175 for DSLR Remote?

Thanks,

Andrew

Both use the generic tethered plugin to run a specified program at each position.  It's just a case of pointing it at the batch file or ahk script.  It means your exposure time is fixed in the external script but as they're both text files it's easy to adjust... but I suspect you don't want to do that very often anyway.