benz145
New member
I bought a D5100 for astrophotography and I'm really happy with my purchase. However, I've been enjoying making time lapse sequences and I want to do one from Sunset to stars. After some research or the technique to make this happen, I've learned about something called 'bulb ramping' which apparently reads the light from the camera before each shot and adjusts the settings appropriately. In my research I seem to have found that bulb ramping is impossible on a Nikon camera. Is this true? (say it ain't so!). This is a real shame; had I known this before purchasing the D5100 I would have gone to a Cannon, which apparently comes with built-in bulb ramping software.
From what I've read, the problem is that there is no fine-grain exposure control on Nikon cameras (I suppose this refers to the 3", 4", 5", 6", 8", 10", 13", etc. exposure settings). But anyone who has used long exposure photography should know that the Bulb mode on Nikons let you leave the shutter open for however long you hold down the button.
If the issue is that the camera can't be controller through software to have fine-grain exposure length adjustments, has anyone considered making a hardware addon that would read the light settings from the camera and then physically press the shutter button for the desired length of time while the camera is in Bulb mode? I did a quick test with Bulb mode and it looks like the camera can do discrete exposure in increments as small as 0.1 seconds (possibly less, but Windows only showed me down to a single decimal place.
Maybe I don't understand the real issue here... someone has probably though of this before and there's likely an issue with such a solution but for now I'm not sure what it would be. Thoughts?
From what I've read, the problem is that there is no fine-grain exposure control on Nikon cameras (I suppose this refers to the 3", 4", 5", 6", 8", 10", 13", etc. exposure settings). But anyone who has used long exposure photography should know that the Bulb mode on Nikons let you leave the shutter open for however long you hold down the button.
If the issue is that the camera can't be controller through software to have fine-grain exposure length adjustments, has anyone considered making a hardware addon that would read the light settings from the camera and then physically press the shutter button for the desired length of time while the camera is in Bulb mode? I did a quick test with Bulb mode and it looks like the camera can do discrete exposure in increments as small as 0.1 seconds (possibly less, but Windows only showed me down to a single decimal place.
Maybe I don't understand the real issue here... someone has probably though of this before and there's likely an issue with such a solution but for now I'm not sure what it would be. Thoughts?