Hello all,
First, I absolutely understand that the proper way to shoot a holy grail timelapse is in manual mode, ramping shutter speed and ISO appropriately oneself.

But ... there are times when that's not possible. For example, I'll be shooting in the mountains this fall. With my primary camera, I'll be very busy shooting non-timelapse stills right through sunset. But I'd also like to set up a secondary camera (Canon R6 II) to capture shots for a timelapse. I won't even be in the area. I'll just set up the camera and tripod, get it started, then come back to retrieve it in a few hours. I know this is not ideal, but in some cases is unavoidable. My question is: What settings would give me the best chance at getting a useable result?

I'm thinking that my only hope would be Av mode - I know, not great. Here's what I'm thinking. I'd set the aperture at something like 2.0. ISO could be Auto, with an ISO range set to something like 100-800. I'd set it it to underexpose by a stop. I'd use an interval of about 6 seconds. I'm guessing that at f2.0 and ISO800, the shutter speed wouldn't need to exceed 4 seconds throughout the blue hour, so I'm hoping that I wouldn't have a problem with the exposure length exceeding the interval. I need to do some more testing to make sure 800 is enough. These days, noise is far less of an issue than in the past, so if I need to make it 1600 or greater, the noise can be dealt with later.

Anyway, I'd appreciate comments and recommendations. Anyone else have an alternative method they like with modern cameras for fully unattended holy grails? As I said, mostly I do them in manual mode, but sometimes I just don't have enough hands!

Thanks in advance.

Yes, that should be the way to go. Experiment with the Auto-ISO Settings and bounds you can set. On Nikon for example you can set Auto-ISO to "Longer Exposure" times which is the way to go (otherwise the camera will do unnecessarily short exposures and crank up ISO too early. So yes, Aperture Priority and Auto ISO might be the best option for unattended Shots where you cannot use the more advanced techniques.

What about QDSLRDashboard to control the camera? As I read in the corresponding forum, at least with the R5 it works, so it might also work with the R6 II.

Sure, that's how I would do it, but I understood he didn't want to use it for that scenario.

Thank you both for the replies. I'll give QdslrDashboard another try. I haven't had much luck getting it to work on the R6, but it's worth another try. Also, I'd probably rather not leave my phone unattended near the camera. But still it's worth some more experimentation.

You should contact Zoltan, the developer of qDDB for any issues with newer Cameras, often he can implement support if he gets the right input. Contact him via https://dslrdashboard.info

This post was last modified: 2024-08-08, 16:07 by kukro.

Get a cheap, used, older Android phone, no need for a SIM- or SD-card. Maybe a new battery so it runs long enough.

Thanks, Gunther. I have tried that but will do so again.

Good idea on the old phone. If I can get the app to work, I'll give it a try.

I used QDDB on an old android tablet on my R6 with no problem.