I just received my Timer Pro and am extremely impressed with the quality and workmanship. I really want to push the envelope with my ability to shoot more frames and as I own an Sony A1 with CF Express data cards so I can write frames very fast. I do hyper lapse work usually at 1 second intervals with .5 second shutter to accomplish the motion blur I like. I have tried my new LRT Timer Pro at .5 second interval settings but the slowest I can get the shutter speed is 1/8th to maintain my .5 second interval. I have tried reducing my release time to 100-150ms, hoping I can speed up any delay I might be getting. I've also changed my auto focus time to zero ms, shooting in manual focus, again attempting to get a little more motion blur. I would love 1/4 second of motion blur, but I'm assuming this is just not attainable. Would love to hear any suggestions on if it's possible to reduce and overhead I am dealing with. This camera is capable of 30 plus raw frames per second in burst so a frame every half second is no big deal to write. Thanks in advance.

First you say, you shoot Hyperlapse with 1 sec interval an 0.5 sec shutter, then you say, you set the LRT PRO Timer to 0.5 seconds interval... Are you aware that the Interval is always the time between one shutter opening and the next? That means exposure time + dark time adds up to the interval.

With the LRT PRO Timer you should be able to do dark times as short as 0.2/0.3 seconds. The camera will always need a trigger at least of 0.1 secs, that leaves an exposure time of 0.1 secs (1/10) for an intrval of 0.5 seconds.
Of course you need to experiment with the individual camera. Only because a camera can do very fast continuous shooting, doesn't mean that you can also fire it with individual shots (as the intervalometer does) as fast also. Cameras are usually not designed to have their shutter pressed in such short intervals.

The ways to fine tune the LRT PRO Timer Settings to ideally match your camera, are explained on https://lrtimelapse.com/lrtpt/manual/ at the very bottom (Fine Tuning...), but I guess you already figured that out.

PS: For Canon cameras there is a "Hack" to get even shorter intervals by leaving the AF Signal on all the time (See settings "DSLM Permanent AF" on the same instructions page), but I don't know if this will work with Sony. Please test and let me know.

Thank you very much for the reply. I tried turning the AF auto focus off after reading your tips on getting the shortest trigger time. I'll try turning it on like you say for Canon Cameras, maybe this will work for me. I believe the shortest trigger time that would work was about 100-150ms, so maybe there is not way of shortening the blackout time of my camera. It would be nice if there was no blackout time Sometimes for hyper lapse I like to track an object for a perfect move or rotation around an object but blackout can disrupt the track.

I didn't double check that I am in electronic shutter. Maybe the camera is defaulting to manual shutter. I'll check that, too. I know when doing high-speed photography that is one of the great features of A1 that you do not get blacked out so you can follow fast moving birds, etc without losing the bird or object by blackout or delay. As you say, rapid, burst photography is different than individual triggered shots with a camera.

I am excited that I can finally break the 1 second intervalometer barrier by being able to do .5 second intervals and my main reason for purchasing this pro unit. Thanks for coming up with this amazing little device.

I just tested with auto focus on set to a very shot time and auto focus off and there seemed to be no difference on my Sony A1. I made sure the camera was set to electronic shutter and there is no blackout at all but 1/8 of a second was the longest shutter speed I could set for a .5 second interval. This is fine. I would like it to be longer, closer to a 1/4 of a second for more motion blur, but I think I have pushed everything to it's limit now and this is where I have landed.

If you want even shorter dark times, set the camera to continuous shooting and use the single/bulb mode to lock the shutter for the time of your shooting, for example 10 minutes. If you set the camera then to say 0.4 secs exposure, thr interval will be automatically a bit longer. Then the LRT PRO timer won't be triggering every shot, it will just gold the shutter pressed.

Sorry to make this a long post but I did further testing and discovered that when in motion, gyro stabilized walking, I could not achieve .5 second interval. I played with various settings on A1, AWB vs a fixed colour setting, LCD display quality low/high and frame rate of finder. variable ISO. The biggest factor seems to be variable ISO or high ISO. At 100 ISO I achieve .5 second interval every time but at 8000 ISO I achieve 1 second or slower interval at 1/8th shutter, so I suggest turning off all processing that requires variable ISO, Auto white balance, steady shot. These tasks can slow the potential interval. The one thing I cannot turn off is the auto focus. I currently have it set to 0ms. Is this off? I still see the display panel show a auto focus rectangle every frame captured at 0ms and I have the camera and lens in manual focus. Hope this is helpful to other people.

This post was last modified: 2021-10-20, 21:27 by Gunther.

Sorry, but this might be a misunderstanding then: you definitely need to turn off AF in camera!
This has nothing to do with the AF signal that the PT still sends to the camera and which duration you can configure in the timers setting. This will not actually trigger any AF in the camera (since it needs to be turned off there) it's just that some cameras need that signal in order to release.
If your camera release with a value of 0ms set for AF Time, go for it. If not gradually increase that time. But always make sure the Camera is switched to MF (sometimes you cam also do that switch on the lens).

Yes, I understand completely now, no confusion. It seems my camera does not need auto focus to trigger the shutter and it is definitely turned off on my camera on the body and the lens. Interesting the other factors that affect potential fast interval. I've tested enough now to know how to achieve .5 seconds. Thanks very much for your help. This is an awesome ProTimer. You've really included everything in it.