In-camera Intervalometer

You might need to increase the time between shots. See my thread with the D7000 intervalometer. I was able to shoot off about 200 frames but my time was set to 34 seconds with 30 second shutter intervals.

http://nikonites.com/d7000/7310-d7000-intervalometer-star-trails.html

The interval time needs to be greater than the shutter speed. So if you want 1 second between exposures you need to set the interval time to 31 seconds, or 61 if you have long exposure NR turned on.

I joined this forum because this has been driving me insane! I was using intervals of 32 seconds and I cannot get more than 11 shots. Pardon my ignorance, but if I bought an aftermarket intervalometer would that make it easier? I'm sick of trying to figure out something seemingly simple!

VectorZ said:

I joined this forum because this has been driving me insane! I was using intervals of 32 seconds and I cannot get more than 11 shots. Pardon my ignorance, but if I bought an aftermarket intervalometer would that make it easier? I'm sick of trying to figure out something seemingly simple!

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You have to be tethered to a computer, but here's a free program you can try.

I never used it, but have it in my bag of tricks.

http://www.diyphotobits.com/

If you want to buy something, Amazon has a couple, here's an example:

Amazon.com: Aputure Timer Camera Remote Control Shutter Cable 3N, for Nikon D90, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D7000, Inexpensive Intervalometer for Time Lapse: Camera & Photo

Here's what I think gets confusing to people. The camera has all the information it needs to do what you want it to do the minute you press the shutter button to start the process, so why doesn't it do what you want? The next thing it will do after you start the interval process is depress the shutter, so it knows about long exposure NR, and if you're in Shutter priority it knows about exposure time (it can't in the others). The real problem lies in the question of "What is an interval?" Does a "10 second interval" mean that a photographer wants a photo every 10 seconds, or that they want 10 seconds between every photo? There are practical applications of each, and it would be great if the interval function gave you the option of setting it either way - but it doesn't.

Nikon has implemented the first way - a 10 second interval means that the shutter is depressed every 10 seconds. What's not taken into account is whether the camera is ready for another shot or not, so unready camera actuations are counted but ignored. In other words, it counts the fact that it's depressed the shutter and doesn't care whether the camera was ready or not.

So, you set the camera for a 30 second exposure and have Long Exposure NR on. You set a 10 second interval time, ask for 10 intervals with 1 shot per interval, and want it to start now. Here's what happens as you press the press the shutter ...

Interval 1 (00:00) : Shutter actuates for first exposure
Interval 2 (00:10) : actuation ignored - shutter is still open from first exposure
Interval 3 (00:20) : actuation ignored - shutter is still open from first exposure
Interval 4 (00:30) : actuation ignored - shutter closes from first exposure and begins Long Exp NR
Interval 5 (00:40) : actuation ignored - Long Exp NR processing from first exposure running
Interval 6 (00:50) : actuation ignored - Long Exp NR processing from first exposure running
Interval 7 (01:00) : (A) actuation ignore - Long Exp NR processing from first exposure running, or (B) 2nd photo starts
Interval 8 (01:10) : (A) 2nd photo starts, or (B) actuation ignored - shutter is still open from second exposure
Interval 9 (01:20) : actuation ignored - shutter is still open from second exposure
Interval 10 (01:30) : (A) actuation ignored - shutter is still open from second exposure, or (B) actuation ignored - shutter closes, 2nd exposure begins Long Exp NR

... timer finishes, and you've got 2 photos where you expected 10. It would have been great for the camera to do a quick calculation and let you know that your interval time was too short, but it's a camera, you're the photographer, and it's going to do the best with what you provide it. It would be nice if it at least not tick the shot off the total count if the shutter did not actuate.

I have a Vello wired remote that will do infinite intervals (i.e. more than the 999 I get with the D600 & D7000). It has no way of knowing the answers to questions 2 and 3 above so cannot factor in when the interval actually ends, so all it does is actuate the shutter and begin a countdown, just like the camera. If you wanted it to do 10 seconds between shots you would need to know that the camera requires 30 seconds for each exposure and 30 seconds for noise reduction before it will be ready to actuate again. So, to get 10 seconds between shots you need to calculate...


So in our example, to get 10 seconds between shots the interval time needs to be set to 70 seconds (01:10).

VectorZ, I'm not sure why you're only getting 11 shots and would need to know 1) how many intervals you were asking for, 2) what shutter speed were you using, and 3) did you have Long Exposure NR on? If I know your settings I can tell you precisely why you got what you got, and what you would have needed to do to get it to do what you really wanted.

AxeMan - Rick S. said:

You have to be tethered to a computer, but here's a free program you can try.

I never used it, but have it in my bag of tricks.

http://www.diyphotobits.com/

If you want to buy something, Amazon has a couple, here's an example:

Amazon.com: Aputure Timer Camera Remote Control Shutter Cable 3N, for Nikon D90, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D7000, Inexpensive Intervalometer for Time Lapse: Camera & Photo

Click to expand...

Haven't tried the program, but the remote is identical to the Vello and will only count down intervals and not take into account whether the shutter actually actuates or not.

VectorZ said:

I joined this forum because this has been driving me insane! I was using intervals of 32 seconds and I cannot get more than 11 shots. Pardon my ignorance, but if I bought an aftermarket intervalometer would that make it easier? I'm sick of trying to figure out something seemingly simple!

Click to expand...

Can you tell us the settings you're using? I played around with it on a D7000 and was able to get some decent results. I might be wrong but I think setting an interval too short could cause the issue you're having. Without knowing your settings I would recommend moving your interval to 35 seconds and see how many pictures you get off. Here were the settings I used on my D7000:

I set the camera up for shutter priority and set it for 30'. ISO was 100 and I was using the 18-105mm kit lens at 18mm and f6.3. Turned off AF and manually focused on a faint star.

I set the interval timer to start at 21:30 (9:30PM). The interval is set at 34 seconds. And the last setting, "intervals x no. of shots =" I set it so that it looked like this 200 x 1 = 200. Basically 200 snaps at 34' intervals. I found it worked perfectly to set the interval at 34' when the shutter priority was set to 30'.


Read more: http://nikonites.com/d7000/7310-d7000-intervalometer-star-trails.html#ixzz2L52uHfAx

PapaST What kind of post processing did you use to combine all the shot for the star trail if I may ask?

Hey guys! Thanks for all of the replies. To be honest I can't remember what I initially dialed in. I was out in the mud and water on my 5 rural acres trying to shoot star trails for the first time. I first just did a 10 minute long exposure https://www.facebook.com/EthanAbelo...80003580.41694.167521503388341&type=1&theater
and then I wanted to try to the interval timer. I think the first time I set it up it was on full manual mode, 30 second shots. Then I set the interval for 32 seconds to allow it to process the image before opening again. I set around 141 exposures (or so I thought) with one interval. I started the camera, watched it for a few minutes and it seemed to be doing its thing. So I went back home, and waited for an hour for it to finish. Then I came back and discovered only 11 or 12 (can't remember) photos were captured. By then it was super late and I had to go to bed. I have since fiddled around with it still on 30 second exposures with multiple intervals and it still stops around 3-10 photos captured. Really all I'd like to know is given 30 second exposures what should I plug into the timer? Or would buying something aftermarket make it easier and give me more control..

Thanks again for the help!

I think the in-house should work. What type of data card are you using? What are the write speeds? If I had to guess, I'd say your camera needs more time to write. So having a faster card 45mb/s vs something like 15mb/s. And giving the camera more time to write... increasing interval to 35 seconds.

PapaST said:

I think the in-house should work. What type of data card are you using? What are the write speeds? If I had to guess, I'd say your camera needs more time to write. So having a faster card 45mb/s vs something like 15mb/s. And giving the camera more time to write... increasing interval to 35 seconds.

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I'm using a SanDisk 32gb class 10. I can try upping it to 35 seconds, will that cause any noticeable gaps in trails?

If it rattled off a couple in succession while you were watching then it should have continued provided it was set up correctly. Can't think of a reason off the top of my head why it would stop all of a sudden unless the battery kicked. Even if the cycles just happened to coincide perfectly so that the buffer filled and you had to wait for it to write before it fired again, you would at most lose one cycle before it fired again, and then lose every X number of cycles. Nothing that would bring you from 141 down to 11 or 12. Unless you accidentally did 14 intervals of 1 photo each instead of 141.

Yeah, the problem is weird. My theory, or at least the theory I'm trying to eliminate is a buffer overload. If this is the case then it might be possible that the intervalometer stops capturing once the cycle has been broken. When researching how to do this shot I ran into several posts where they only got about 10-15 shots and then it just stopped. I'm assuming the camera cannot write during the 30 second capture so having 1 or two seconds to constantly write 200 pics would probably fill the buffer if the card was slow.

One thing that would be good to see is after 10 shots where is the buffer in regards to shots remaining. If it's down to 1 or 2 remaining then I'm guessing this is the problem. The other reason could just be configuration. It's not the most intuitive setup menu but it's not that difficult.

VectorZ said:

I'm using a SanDisk 32gb class 10. I can try upping it to 35 seconds, will that cause any noticeable gaps in trails?

Click to expand...

I think it would be tough to see the gaps. But 5 seconds is a long time. My reasoning for 5 seconds is because I used 4 seconds for my D7000 that was shooting 16MB whereas the D600 will shoot 24MB sized pics. Although your card is faster than the card I used on the D7000 so 3 or 4 seconds could be plenty.

I ran some tests on broken cycles this morning (example above) and the camera definitely does not stop - at least when due to the shutter already being actuated for the photo or for LENR. Perhaps a full buffer is different. A little freaky because you'd literally need to both fill the buffer and not have sufficient time to dump at least one photo.

I'm running a test now with a 34 second interval and I've logged 20 shots already! What does the "r09" or "r10" mean? I can't find a reference to that anywhere.

that should be the number of shots you have in your buffer... when that number runs low that's not a good thing in this instance

VectorZ said:

I'm running a test now with a 34 second interval and I've logged 20 shots already! What does the "r09" or "r10" mean? I can't find a reference to that anywhere.

Click to expand...

I think I saw that somewhere today. Shots left in buffer?

Found in
r09? What is this? HELP « Nikon Rumors Forum
A half-press of the shutter button not only activates focus but also displays shots remaining in the buffer (in your case, 9 remaining). If you hold down the shutter button on a continuous shooting mode you'll see that number tick down as the buffer fills.

Tracsoft - Don Kuykendall said:

I think I saw that somewhere today. Shots left in buffer?

Found in
r09? What is this? HELP « Nikon Rumors Forum
A half-press of the shutter button not only activates focus but also displays shots remaining in the buffer (in your case, 9 remaining). If you hold down the shutter button on a continuous shooting mode you'll see that number tick down as the buffer fills.

Click to expand...

Thanks, it consistently stays at r9 or r10 the entire time, so the buffering isn't an issue.