Triggertrap Time Lapse bramping

[gregbradley]

For transitions from night to morning or afternoon to night sequences.

https://triggertrap.com/mobile-bulb-ramping/

I have the app and the cables etc.

Hopefully I can get it to work and post the result.
Last time I tried I couldn't get the Triggertrap to connect to
my Nikon D800E. Hopefully I can this time with the update
or with more study!

Greg.

[TriggertrapLucy]

Hi Greg,

I work for Triggertrap, and just quickly wanted to say that if you're having any trouble getting it to work for you, email me at support@triggertrap.com and I'll try and sort it out. Also, we'd love to see what you come up with, so please join our Flickr group (on.tri.gg/flickr) and post your results there as well if you want.

[gregbradley]

Hi Lucy.

Great to get the support.

I did get it to work which is great. I can see the accelerated/decelerated feature will be handy plus I now have an easy way to do multiple longer than 30 second shots (why do most camera makers insist on 30 seconds being the max?).

The bramping function appears to be more for those who want to shoot a sunset or sunrise but not a transition from day to night with a well exposed night shot.

I just tried it. With my D800E and 14-24mm lens at F2.8 and ISO6400 the minimum shutter speed the bramping app allows is 1/15th of a second. That gives an image of pure white! It needs to allow speeds of 1/8000th of a second or control ISO setting as it goes which I presume it cannot as it only has shutter speed and focus control available to play with.

A night shot is ISO3200 to ISO6400 at F2.8 and 30 seconds at 14mm. I use ISO6400 and may try to use 43 seconds using the rule of 600 divided by focal lenth for exposure length.

Its way cool though to control your camera via your iphone though so I really like that. I suppose also that the iphone would have to be fully charged to survive a 9 hour time lapse session.

Greg.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

I can see the accelerated/decelerated feature will be handy plus I now have an easy way to do multiple longer than 30 second shots (why do most camera makers insist on 30 seconds being the max?).

One thing that delighted me about the OM-D Greg - 30, 40, 50 and 60 second standard exposures without a remote - and "LiveTime" (like BULB, but without having to keep the button depressed) for 30 full minutes - no cables.

I suppose also that the iphone would have to be fully charged to survive a 9 hour time lapse session.

Get a 12v iPhone adapter and just leave the phone plugged in! The cable to the TriggerTrap uses the headphone socket, not the 30-pin.

Keen to see ramping results from you Greg - I'm just about to try my own with the Oly.

[gregbradley]

Thanks for that Chris.

The Olympus is ahead of the Canikon crowd then. 30 second limit is unnecessarily limiting. Also I like the idea of the Pentax in built tracking ability. It'd be great if the 60Da had all these features built in. A dream I suppose.

I tried the Trigger Trap last night for bramping.

I think it will be not workable for astro time lapse. It appears to be designed only to do sunsets and sunrises.

Basically the slowest shutter speed it will take is 1/15th of a second. To get a twilight image properly exposed at 1/15th of a second with F2.8 and ISO6400 probably requires 1/8000th sec. 1/15th sec to be properly exposed would be ISO100 and probably F8.
Also diffraction effects (that start to result in image blurring) on the D800 start at about F8 (not that important with a time lapse which is low rez anyway).

I use 30 seconds at F2.8 and ISO6400 on my D800E for time lapse at night. 1/15th of a second in twilight is a totally white image at F2.8 and ISO6400.

I found the internal camera functions of the D800E worked better and easily. I set it to auto ISO, max 6400, min 100, min shutter speed 4 seconds (again Nikon why not 30 seconds???) and aperture priority mode at F2.8.

That worked with some mild flicker but once it gets dark its too dark. So I simply stop it at that point and kick in a new time lapse for the night session 30 seconds ISO6400, Manual mode, no auto ISO and let it rip.

Then do a cross fade between the 2 movies. Its not perfect or seamless but its something.

The Triggertrap did the sunset ok, but then I have to stitch it together as a movie (I am still learning and my attempts to do that failed so far).

Once it was dark images were simply almost black.

I think it also does the ramping over the whole period rather than the ramping until dark and then continue at a night setting for several hours.

So its a start but needs more features to be useful for astro time lapse.

Greg.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Your asking too much Greg, I've been through all this.
Bulb mode was never designed to offer very fast exposures, 1/15 is about the limit, even then some trickery is involved to get reliable timing at those short times.
And full day-night auto transition needs changes in exposure time, ISO and apature, that's hard to do in bulb mode (automatically). Especially without an external integrated light meter, it's guesswork just with timing.

Bramping is excellent for TL within a limited exposure range so just use full camera automode and switch to bramping when it gets darker with appropriate ISO/AP settings at that time.

Nothing comes close to Lightroom with TL time lapse for post processing, it automatically irons out all the flicker and transitions automatically.

The full "TL holly grail" gear your after isn't commercially available yet, but it's just a matter of time.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Fred.

Day to night transitions were almost smooth with autoISO setup like that.

I'll try full auto as well and as you say switch to regular AP settings once its dark and see how that works.

Those software do seem to be the standard used.

Cheers,

Greg.