Month: January 2009

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How long does battery last while doing tethered time lapse?

I thought that this was going to be a major limitation — the battery life of the camera — as while connected via USB the camera is constantly “on” and never goes into a sleep mode.

However while I was doing recent testing with the Nikon D40 time lapse I started with a full battery and took schedule shots every 5 seconds for about an hour, and at the end the battery still said 100% full.  Both via the camera icon, and via the battery meter in my script.

So obviously some power has been used, but very little apparently.  While this is good news it is also a bit puzzling so I’d love to hear your experience with it.

My batteries are not brand new or anything, I’ve taken many thousands of frames with the D40 and swap between two original Nikon EN-EL9 Rechargeable Li-ion Batteries.  So far they have given me great service, and they last longer than the D300 batteries even though those are physically larger.

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Made any time lapse videos?

If you have made any time lapse vids using my script and they are publicly available (youtube, etc) I’d love it if you’d post a link!  I’ve still not done anything interesting with it — I have a few ideas but never the right time to sit there with camera and computer for several hours.  Sadly nothing worth seeing from where I live or work and even the sky has been cloudless for days so I can’t do the “clouds streaming across the sky” thing.

Anyway if you have had better luck, or better ideas, than me lets have a look!

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DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 3.1 – Patience

Here is a small update to the 3.0 version

.  Besides a bug fix it also allows delaying the start of a time lapse, which is why I call this the Patience release.

DOWNLOAD

Changes:

  • Allow click on preview image if path has a space
  • Maximum time lapse shots
  • Delay before starting time lapse

When doing a time lapse you now get these options:

Frequency (seconds)

>

   Shots each time  

   Total shots to take  

   Delay before starting  

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White balance lens cap

I had this idea about two days ago — make a lens cap out of the same material used for an ExpoDisc and you can leave it on all the time.

Turns out it has already been done.  [via dps]

Rather begs a DIY version though doesn’t it?  I have a cheap 3rd party extra lens cap (bought at great expense in Venice just down from the Rialto when I thought I’d lost my original Nikon cap), which I could merge with a Pringles can lid with or without a coffee filter.

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Closing a crashed DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control

If you find that DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control crashes — then you may be suprised to find it does not appear in the Windows Task manager, so you can’t end the task as you might another application.

Well actually you can — but you need to know that it is actually an “HTA” which is a type of Internet Explorer script.  So to kill it you need to terminate a process called MSHTA.EXE which is the container for these scripts.

So press Alt-Ctrl-Del (or Windows-K) to bring up the Windows Task manager, click on the Processes tab, then find and click on mshta.exe.  You may then end click the End Process button.

mshta-end-process

You do not need to reboot or anything else, you can now run the script again.

If this happens to you please do let me know the situation (XP/Vista, what camera, and what you were doing right before the crash) so hopefully I can improve the software to avoid it next time.

Thanks.

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DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 3.0 – Happy New Year!

I’m please to be able to say that you can now download

the latest release of DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control.   This is release 3.0 – the Happy New Year! release.

DOWNLOAD 3.0

Upgrading to this version will get you:

  • Time Lapse!  

Yes,  at last, I’ve implemented — admittedly very very basic and boring — but still functional — time lapse.  If you have a D300 or other camera with time lapse built in then this is boring, but for those of you with D40 and similiar then this gets you what you need to do all those fun time lapse videos.

  • Persistent download directory

It now remembers the directory you selected and stays with it when you restart the application.

  • File name prefix

This field allows you to specify something to prefix the file names with.  The idea is that you use it when shooting a lot of people, say at a school or fair, and as each person comes up you can just type in their name, shoot a few shots, then change the name for the next person.  Then each file name will have the person’s name on it.

  • Reconnect camera without restarting

If you need to reconnect the camera; say the usb cable came unplugged, or you forgot to change to M mode before starting, you can now just click again on Select Camera” rather than restart the script.

Ok so that’s pretty much it — plus some small tweaks and bug fixes.   I’ll write or do a video soon with some howto time lapse, and how to actually turn it into video using free tools.

Until then, Happy New Year!

PS.  If you’ve found this site and/or my scripts helpful, please do help to spread the word by telling a friend, posting a message on a forum, blogging  about it or similiar — the more people who hear about it the better!  Thanks very much for your help which I greatly appreciate.

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