Work around for limited bulb mode

[bencoyote]

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I haven't had a chance to try this with star trails yet because of overcast skies but has anybody used a cable release with a lock, continuous or drive mode, and a shutter speed of 3/4s (the longest setting with no dark frame subtraction) to work around the limited bulb mode problem. You can merge photos in Photoshop adding their luminance. 

 

This probably won't work with light painting  because of the gap when the shutter resets but for slowly moving dim things it might. I love those shots walking up a hill on a moonless night with nothing but a headlamp.

 

i wonder if it would work for something like Alexey Titaranko's stuff.

 

Any experience?

[jmahto]

I haven't had a chance to try this with star trails yet because of overcast skies but has anybody used a cable release with a lock, continuous or drive mode, and a shutter speed of 3/4s (the longest setting with no dark frame subtraction) to work around the limited bulb mode problem. You can merge photos in Photoshop adding their luminance. 

 

This probably won't work with light painting  because of the gap when the shutter resets but for slowly moving dim things it might. I love those shots walking up a hill on a moonless night with nothing but a headlamp.

 

i wonder if it would work for something like Alexey Titaranko's stuff.

 

Any experience?

I have used it for star trails and capturing meteorite. Works beautifully. Very simple to setup. Simply set it to fixed ISO, C mode and lock the shutter (I have 20 year old mechanical cable). Leave it in A mode and automatically it will go up to few sec (60sec for ISO 200, 30sec for ISO 400, 16sec for ISO 800, 8sec for ISO 1600).

 

It can't be more simple than that.

 

In this mode my M240 ran for 4 hrs on full battery and got fully exhausted after 900 shots (ISO 1600, 8sec each) I didn't want stars smearing in this case. I actually left it all night and collected it in the morning. 

 

If you want star trail then set it to ISO 400 so that shutter is open for 30sec (a good compromise since there will be a gap of 30 sec due to dark frame). 

Edited May 5, 2016 by jmahto

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[jmahto]

Meteorite pic

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Star trail. What I liked about star trail from M is that it had vibrant colors. I have experience with Canon 5D mkIII and Nex-6 sensor for star trails too and they were not as vibrant after PP.

[jto555]

OK, a silly question. Do you not get "gaps" in the star trails. A 60 second exposure followed by 60 seconds of a black subtraction frame? I don't see any gaps in the images so is there a work around?

 

John

[jmahto]

OK, a silly question. Do you not get "gaps" in the star trails. A 60 second exposure followed by 60 seconds of a black subtraction frame? I don't see any gaps in the images so is there a work around?

 

John

 

First thing first. There will always be gaps in 1:1 zoom which may not be visible in your preferred viewing size. The star trail stacking software also puts some effort in bridging the gap but it is never fully sufficient. I use StarStax which has a slider for this.

 

Having said that, you can minimize the gap by minimizing the exposure time. A 60 sec exposure will have 60 sec gap but a 16sec exposure will have only 16sec gap. You will have to experiment.

I used ISO 400 that gives 30sec exposure and 30 sec gap. To me this is a good compromise. 

[bencoyote]

OK, a silly question. Do you not get "gaps" in the star trails. A 60 second exposure followed by 60 seconds of a black subtraction frame? I don't see any gaps in the images so is there a work around?

 

John

If you want to minimize the gaps then the longest exposure you can use is .75s the click between 1 and 2 (as in 1/2 not the 2s). That should leave a gap just long enough for the shutter to reset which should be good in most cases.

 

The rule of thumb with star trails is 400 (some say 600) over FD = the maximum time in seconds before you get star trails. There is some more accurate math that you can do based upon the angular displacement of the star given its relationship to the celestial pole and the sensor resolution but for the most part 400/FD works for me. With a 28mm lens this means you can easily use 8s exposures and almost never have gaps.

 

The challenges come when you are trying to do what I broadly call light painting. Like when someone is writing in the air with a LED or when you are shooting a very long exposure like someone climbing a trail at night and what you want is just the trail of their headlamp as they ascend. 

 

I think most of the writing in the air things can be completed within 60s so those might be doable. The question is can you pick an ISO/shutter speed combination that lets you capture the entire motion without running into a the part of the cycle where the camera is doing the dark frame subtraction. If not, is the interframe shutter reset time short enough in comparison to the speed of the motion to make the gap not too noticeable or offensive.

 

The question is can the trails of headlamp shots be done in such a way that the shutter recycle gaps can be overlooked or healed.

 

And can you achieve something like Alexey Titeranko did?

 

I'm going to admit right off the bat that these are more photographic constructions that normal photographs. The camera could make this easier but this is a workaround for some challenging photo puzzles.

[jmahto]

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Lightpainting: waterfall under Milky Way.

M240 and 15CV

 

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[jmahto]

One thing I learnt in light painting (I am no expert, my friend is), is that color temperature of the flash light matters. Most of newer flash lights are LEDs which are so cool/blue that balancing that with sky color in PP becomes a challange. It is better to use a warmer color flashlight for better color balance with the rest of the picture.

[ron.wolfe]

Thanks for the above info. Out on road trip and tried to do a Milky Way shot of the east side sierras st Alabama hills. I knew the bulb was limited to 60sec but didn't realize it went down with increasing ISO, realized that while shooting, super annoying given my son with his A7 could crank up the ISO and shoot as long as he wanted. After a bit of thinking on the drive here to Zion, I think I may try again with 8 sec ISO 1600 and take several images to stack in photo. I can then crank up the exposure in post and the noise should be reduced from the image stacking. I'll also get an image near blue hour to get foreground exposure and leave everything untouched until Milky Way is up. Thoughts please? Advice much appreciated for a first time poster

[ron.wolfe]

This is what I'm trying to accomplish. He was able to do this with single image and light painting. 17 sec, ISO 1600 f2.8

Sorry for spelling edits above. On mobile

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