Missing shots when using together with an intervalometer

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zoom
Posts: 44
Joined: August 27th, 2020, 8:20 am

May 11th, 2021, 8:40 pm

Hello,

I experience the missing shots issue a lot when I do timelapse with LRTimelapse Pro Timer paired together with Unleashed.

When I used LRTimelapse Timer alone, and manually ramped the exposure with the camera dials, there's no missing shot:
No missing frames when manual.png
No missing frames when manual.png (74.18 KiB) Viewed 2868 times

But whenever I used Unleash (in photo mode) to change the exposure settings while the LRTimelapse Timer is running, I always missed some shots although the interval is much longer than the shutter speed (I tried the faster shutter speeds, still the same issue):
Missing frames with Unleashed.png
Missing frames with Unleashed.png (51.55 KiB) Viewed 2868 times

Could it be possible that Unleash might block/interfere the shutter release when Unleash is changing the exposure settings?

Thanks for your help!
PS. The reason I need LRTimelapse Timer is because I need to ramp the interval from 0.5 seconds (sunset) all the way to 23 seconds (milky way). Unleashed alone was not able to achieve this (I had a feature request in another thread)
Oliver
Posts: 1127
Joined: October 9th, 2018, 4:17 pm

May 12th, 2021, 11:15 am

Hmm, that's odd. It could be that if you're really just in the process of making a change, when the intervalometer tries to trigger, that the shutter is blocked for a few milliseconds. But I don't recall this being the case. There are some operations where the camera UI is explicitly blocked, but we have not rolled any of those out.
can you try to observe the top screen of your camera to see if it says "BUSY" when the Intervalometer tries to trigger?
do you make the change from our app immediately after a shot, so that there's a long pause before the next time it should trigger? and does the change get carried out successfully?
Founder & CEO of Foolography, Hardware & Firmware developer.
zoom
Posts: 44
Joined: August 27th, 2020, 8:20 am

May 14th, 2021, 6:48 am

Thanks, Oliver.
can you try to observe the top screen of your camera to see if it says "BUSY" when the Intervalometer tries to trigger?
The top screen on my Canon5d IV shows 'Busy' msg briefly right after the shutter is closed for each shot. I guess that's when the buffer is being written to the memory card. But when the shutter is open, which is triggered by the intervalometer, there's no 'Busy' warning.
do you make the change from our app immediately after a shot, so that there's a long pause before the next time it should trigger? and does the change get carried out successfully?
Since the time difference btw my shutter speed and interval is only around 2~3 seconds, it's hard to change the setting exactly right after a shot. So, there's no long pause. Sometimes I had to try multiple times to get the setting applied. I just kept trying, and I didn't pay attention whether the shutter was open or closed. This is the part I suspect to have caused those missing shots, that the shutter was blocked when I made any changes from Unleashed app.

I guess the two devices have to be synchronized if the camera doesn't supports multi thread operations, otherwise their operations could block each other. Any suggestions? I really don't want to leave a 5 second gap between the shots.

Or do you guys have any schedule to start on the interval ramping feature that we discussed last year?

Thank you!
zoom
Posts: 44
Joined: August 27th, 2020, 8:20 am

May 14th, 2021, 7:50 pm

Here's the reply from Gunther Wegner:
It seems that your USB trigger blocks the camera, that's quite often the case.
qDslrDashboard is one of the few exceptions that is able to control cameras and still give you the freedom to operate them. Holy Grail can either be shot automatically with qDDB or also of course manually, if you want.
I also started manually and then created the concept on how to automate what I was doing - that's the "Auto Holy Grail" in qDDB today. Just check it out.
Here's my video where I show it. https://lrtimelapse.com/gear/dslrdashboard/
I am not sure how qDDB is able to control the cameras but doesn't block the shutter. I will definitely try the qDDB workflow.

Again, I am looking forward to the interval ramping feature within Unleashed!

Cheers,
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