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LRT Pro Timer 2.5 and Control My Camera App

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#1 r_adams
Hello

Today is the first time I have used my new Pro Timer 2.5.

I set up for a sunrise with starting settings of 1/13", f8, ISO 3200 on a Nikon D7100 and connected to ControlMyCamera (v1.0.2) on an iPhone 7+ (iOS 12.4) using a Nikon WU-1a WiFi connection.

I set the Pro Timer 2.5 to Timelapse (M), 5-second intervals, unlimited. Start.

I set ControlMyCamera to the LRTimelase mode and chose the Holy Grail mode.

My first issue is that ControlMyCamera seems to drop the WiFi connection a couple of times before it creates a stable connection. I have used ControlMyCamera in the past, prior to using the Pro Timer 2.5, and that is something it seems I must get used to. So now I start my time-lapses 10-minutes sooner to work through the dropped connection a couple of times. Today was no different. However, the Pro Timer 2.5 was clicking away every 5 seconds while I tried to get a stable connection with ControlMyCamera.

Once my connection was stable I watched my iPhone and saw that the jpegs were transmitting correctly and the ISO was dropping from 3200 as the sun came up and the scene got brighter.

Then the curious thing happened. At frame 60, the camera triggered with a one-second interval and frame 61 with a four-second interval. Then from frame 62 to 132, the five-second interval was maintained. Frame 133, four-seconds, 134, six-seconds, 135 to 140, five-seconds, 141, four-seconds, 142, five-seconds, 143, six-seconds, then five-seconds from frame 144 to 168.

The four, five and six-seconds fluctuations happened once and a while until frame 587 where the camera seemed to start taking two shots at the same time all the way to frame 1269 when the Pro Timer 2.5 just stopped.

I checked my cards and the raw files were writing to a 64Gb card and there was 32Gb free space left. The small basic Jpegs were writing to slot two and there was only 838Mb used.

Another curious thing happened in ControlMyCamera, once it automatically dropped to ISO 100, no other exposure changes took place. I thought the shutter speed was to adjust next and it would not. I manually adjusted for the shutter on my iPhone until the Pro Timer 2.5 (with a fully charged battery) stopped. Total time for this timelapse was 74 minutes and all of my external batteries still had plenty of charge left.

So my question is, has anyone experienced something like this? When I go out to test again, are there any specific settings I should be mindful of that could cause this behaviour. To troubleshoot this issue, what other information would be helpful that I have not included here so that I can capture that in the field.

Thank you in advance for any suggestion that could prove helpful.

Have a great day, Rick.
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#2 r_adams
Oh, I almost forgot, I have updated to 2.5r18 firmware for the Pro Timer 2.5.
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#3 Gunther
Make sure to set the camera to single shot (not continuous).
Also, interval differences of 1 second +/- can be ignored, because the intervals are calculated by the differences in exif date/time and those are always rounded to full seconds, you can just ignore that, it might happen bis doesn't mean, that the intervals are not constant.
Also check, that long time noise reduction is deactivated on your camera.
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#4 r_adams
Hello and thank you for your reply.

I am just back to an internet connection and I have received your message. I wish I could have seen this before I left on my timelapse expedition, it would have been helpful while I was away. I reviewed all of my manuals in the field trying to solve my problems, I never noticed any mention of single-shot vs continuous. This would have been helpful. I will try this next time to see if it fixes my issues.

Thank you.

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