D800 Interval Timer for Perseid Meteor Showers...FAIL!

So I took out my D800 last night to try and catch some of the peak of this year's Perseid meteor shower at Castaic Lake, just an hour north of Los Angeles. Because we were only 50 miles from the city, there was still a decent amount of light pollution, but the spot did offer enough visibility to catch about 30-40 meteors in the three hours I was there.

I first tested it out at my apartment and set up a 5 shot, 30 sec exposure at 1″ intervals. Seemed to work. And so, I was set for some epic star time lapses, or so I thought. This is where I found my first glitch with the D800. When using the interval mode, the D800 just wouldn’t have it with the long exposures. I played with my settings, adjusting the intervals, the number of times, and shots, all to no avail. The camera would stop triggering after about 10-15 shots, despite that I set it to shoot 240. In the end, I came out with these failed timelapses.



You can see the jumps occurred everytime the intervals stopped automatically triggering. It seemed to me that the issue was time related. When I set the exposures to 1″ or less, it seemed to have no problem continually firing. I only tested it out to 30-40 shots, but it seemed to work properly. When I was shooting at 20-30″ however, it would crap out every 10 minutes or so. I couldn’t find anyone else who has experienced this same problem, nor could I find any postings on anyone trying to timelapse with long exposures. So, let me know if you have any clue why!

Here are a couple stills from the night:





Read more at my blog! Perseid Meteor Shower and Interval FAIL! |

I am having interval timer issues with mine as well. It has a serial number of 500476 (early model) I wonder if that has something to do with it. I can't even get it to start the camera won't let me highlight the On setting. : (

Could have something to do with the buffer filling up and not being able to process the images quickly enough.

Very nice, hope you resolve what happened and let us know.

If you are shooting in RAW, the D800 can't buffer the images fast enough. Switch to JPEG, Hi and you should have no problem.

Have a read and look at this - Nikon D800 Night Time Lapse Tutorial

you need to set the interval to longer than the shutter speed. 1 sec interval will take a shot every second not 1second between shots. So a 30 sec exposure will need 31 sec interval, if you want 1 sec between shots.

I just got my D800E and have the same issue. I was shooting in .jpg 30 sec with 1sec in between. After 29 shots it gave up. I started again and after 29 shots, it stopped again. I hope someone has an answer.

lomeranger said:

I just got my D800E and have the same issue. I was shooting in .jpg 30 sec with 1sec in between. After 29 shots it gave up. I started again and after 29 shots, it stopped again. I hope someone has an answer.

Click to expand...

The interval timer works great, but your problems are probably just your settings. Try 2 seconds between. Except, you do not specify "seconds between". Instead you specify Interval. Try programming 30 second shutters in 32 second intervals (be more generous). The shutter time must fit within the interval.

It cannot do a 30 second shutter in 30 second intervals, and probably eventually fails in 31 seconds (it also has to do White Balance and gamma on 36 megapixels, and compress JPG and write the buffer, and these partial seconds accumulate, etc). It will skip photos if the previous shutter has not finished, and waiting for the next interval, you may think it stopped.

D800 manual (page 202) "Choose an interval longer than the slowest anticipated shutter speed."

(page 203) "Note that because shutter speed and the time needed to record the image to the memory card may vary from shot to shot, the interval between a shot being recorded and the start of the next shot may vary."

32 seconds can't matter to you, and 32 probably works fine.

One way to test this in advance is to take one long exposure photo, then see how long it takes the camera to process the image after you hear the shutter close. (Little green light blinking... or "Job Nr" in info window.) Make sure your gap between pics is enough to cover that amount of time. As others have said, you're overloading the buffer or processor.

If you have "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" on, that adds a lot to the processing time.

Your pics and time lapse still look pretty cool!

Blade Canyon said:

If you have "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" on, that adds a lot to the processing time.

Click to expand...

In fact doubles it, 30 seconds shutter become about 60 seconds processing.


BTW, technically in real world, 30 seconds shutter time is always actually 32.0 seconds, required due to the stops being in the necessary sequence of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 seconds.

The marked shutter numbers (all of them) are just smooth convenient approximations for humans to see, not exactly what the shutter uses. Going faster, all the actual shutters are the binary sequence, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/256, 1/512 second, etc.

Easy to confirm that the 32 seconds is true, and the interval timer surely must know that, but I have never tested what its intervals actually do about it. One or the other 30 second numbers has to manipulated however.

And 32 second intervals do work better. My worry is if that is pushing it too?

The problem I ran into with long exposures is that the flash of the meteorite was washed out by the stars due to the extended exposures. I think there's a balance between light accumulation vs. the amount of light provided by the meteorite...if you know what I'm saying.
​

Dave_W said:

The problem I ran into with long exposures is that the flash of the meteorite was washed out by the stars due to the extended exposures. I think there's a balance between light accumulation vs. the amount of light provided by the meteorite...if you know what I'm saying.
​

Click to expand...

Yeah, the meteorite only lasts a second. But your pictures are great (ALL of your pictures are great, a truly impressive collection, in any setting).

I got a 14-24mm lens hoping for good star pictures, but even at 14mm FX, it is still going to need some type of motor drive. Even at 14mm, anything much more than about 20 seconds is too much motion and streak. And even at high ISO and f/2.8, that really isn't enough.

FWIW, I checked my D800 interval timer. If you want 30 seconds shutter speed, then set 33 seconds Interval. Any 30 second shutter is required to actually be 32 seconds (which must be be full stops, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 second steps - just how cameras are).
Here is a chart of actual shutter speeds, if anyone is interested
Photographic Tables, F/stop, Shutter Speed, ISO and EV

But a 33 second interval will provide nearly, almost, a one second delay between "30 second" frames.

However, 32 second interval will not work with "30" seconds, apparently -0 time between them, and mine skips every other interval. Too close.