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Sony Holy Grail Timelapse Method

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#11 niccoc1603
Hi,

this is my experience with SONY A7ii:

- use Wi-Fi direct as connection between your tablet and the camera. I found it's more stable than normal Wi-fi
- set image quality "RAW+S", which means Small Jpeg file size (about 6Mb with A7ii)
- I use a Pixel intervalometer (no hack) and a safe darktime with the above settings is 8". it might be even more if Jpeg preview is >6Mb.

When using QDDB make sure all values (ISO/aperture/shutter) are initialized and visualized in green in the bottom status bar of the app before you enter the LRTimelapse module.
Also, as said above (QDDB v. 3.5.5): be sure that after you enter the LrTimelapse screen you manually set all the min/max values before you enable AHG (going to be fixed in next version).
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#12 Gunther
Wow, 8 Secs darktime? That's slow... I wonder why it takes the camera so long to transfer that preview? If that's the fastest you can get with sony, I'd say that the sonys are not really suited for timelapse work...
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#13 niccoc1603
you may get down to 6", but that would be the absolute minumum for my experience. With Sony you can only connect the camera to qDDB through Wi-fi and "Smart Remote App" (for A7II), after each shot the camera has a short period where the display says "Processing", this is the main source of delay Maybe new A7xIII with built-in smartphone connection function are faster?
With standard operating mode and just external intevalometer you can get down to 2" darktime
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#14 Benobiwahn
(2018-03-27, 07:59)niccoc1603 Wrote: Hi,

this is my experience with SONY A7ii:

- use Wi-Fi direct as connection between your tablet and the camera. I found it's more stable than normal Wi-fi
- set image quality "RAW+S", which means Small Jpeg file size (about 6Mb with A7ii)
- I use a Pixel intervalometer (no hack) and a safe darktime with the above settings is 8". it might be even more if Jpeg preview is >6Mb.

When using QDDB make sure all values (ISO/aperture/shutter) are initialized and visualized in green in the bottom status bar of the app before you enter the LRTimelapse module.
Also, as said above (QDDB v. 3.5.5): be sure that after you enter the LrTimelapse screen you manually set all the min/max values before you enable AHG (going to be fixed in next version).
Gunter, zoltan and nico,
First of all, thanks for all your replies! Smile

I also did some testing during the last four days. I thought I figured it out, which at the end turned out not to be true, but here's my findings:

Iso ramping started to work once I switched to sunrise mode in QDDB.
When that happened, I directly tried out sunset mode and again it didn't work.
I started roaming through the Sony menu again and I found the following:
In the "ctrl/w smartphone" menu of the a7riii the third option is called "always connected". It was switched off, so I switched it on. From that point on iso ramping works in sunrise as well as sunset mode!
So I thought to have found the mistake I've been doing. Just to be sure, I switched it off again to confirm it wouldnt work afterwards. Strangely it did work also with that function switched off...
I tried some intervals inside the room so I didn't have much options of changing the lighting situation. Once I recorded about 500 photos with a downtime of 4" between shots and without the app crashing and keeping count of the frames. I have to say it was quite underexposed so I suppose the JPGs were really small. It's a pity I didn't actually compare them to the size of properly exposed ones.
I used the QDDB intervalometer with my test shots. I will try more with the pixel intervalometer (still without hack) and will let you know.

Anyway it seems to work now.

Thanks all for your help!!

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#15 niccoc1603
Hi obiwan
I am very interested as I am going to upgrade to A7III soon Smile

I am pretty sure jpeg size has nothing to do with exposure

One question: when you control the camera through wi-fi and qddb, do you have a "processing" stand-by period after each shot?

Thanks
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#16 Benobiwahn
(2018-03-29, 07:48)niccoc1603 Wrote: Hi obiwan
I am very interested as I am going to upgrade to A7III soon Smile

I am pretty sure jpeg size has nothing to do with exposure

One question: when you control the camera through wi-fi and qddb, do you have a "processing" stand-by period after each shot?

Thanks
Hi Nico,

Sorry for the late reply but I was super busy with work in the last month and didnt get to continue my tests properly.

However, I'm pretty sure, overly underexposed JPGs (solid black in big areas) are smaller than properly exposed ones.. At least that's what I observe looking at file sizes. But anyway, I tried a holy grail sunset again. I didn't go into to complete darkness but ramped to a max shutterspeed of 1" at an interval of 5" and then automatically from iso 100 to iso 320 or so with no problem. I shot around 800 frames without QDDB crashing. Again, I underexposed one stop cause I was shooting directly into the setting sun. If that's of importance (I think so though, cause a bigger file size results in a longer time to transfer to QDDB I suppose).
The smallest JPG files on a7r iii are 11M. If you get the a7 iii with the 24M contrary to the 42M of the a7r iii, I suppose you can get smaller JPGs out of it, which might help.

What's the smallest JPG on the Nikons you shoot with Gunther?

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#17 Gunther
On the D750 I can set the JPG size to 6MP while shooting full 24MP RAWs. That's very performant.
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