A700 time lapse

Hi, I am disappointed that the A700 does not have a time lapse feature. My 7D has it, even my 7Hi had it...

I installed the Sony tethered software and played with it very briefly and not yet read the manual for it (help file?) and wonder if there is any way to set it up to shoot at regular intervals?

Alternatively (if Sony does not add the feature in a future firmware upgrade - very easy IMHO but unlikely...) maybe they could come up with a programmable wireless remote commander?

Darren

Perhaps use something like this?

Btw, great site sybersitizen, I read all the articles a while ago before coming to Dyxum, well written and informative.

Thanks guys, I will have a look at those links. But I suppose if it's convenient to keep the camera tethered to a computer (say a laptop) then I suppose there should be a way to write a short windows program, or record a macro (I think thats what they are called) to do what you want.

Syber,

It may be a shot in the dark...after reading on your excellent site (btw) about your lightness levels - and variations thereof - during your videos...but could you shoot at the minimum or maximum aperture available. At max aperture, it should remain constant as the aperture lever shouldn't move. At min aperture it should stop down to the mechanical limit every time. In both instances, you may get the reliability you want.

Alternatively, you could (although it's expensive) use a pro editing suite like Premiere Pro - as these things can match frame brightness etc throughout the clip.

My previous attempts at time lapse have been crap (not applying myself properly) so I'm hardly an expert. But the aperture trick might work...

Hey guys,

interesting to see that this topic was just raised yesterday, as I've spent a couple of hours today on getting remote control interval shooting to work with my A700 (using a Mac). So far no luck. Two things I've tried:

(i) Use Applescript UI scripting to "click" the shutter button. I've managed to do this, the button is being clicked (you see the colour change), but no picture is taken! I have no idea why this is the case, I can successfully Applescript-"click" any other buttons in the "Remote Camera Control" window, the only button that does *not* work is the shutter :(

FYI, here is the script I used:
---------------------------------------------
activate application "Remote Camera Control.app"
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Remote Camera Control"
click button 10 of window "Remote Camera Control"
end tell
end tell
---------------------------------------------

Anybody has an idea why this is not working?

(ii) I doug around in the applications files ("Show Package Contents"...) and had a look at the Interface (MainMenu.nib, with the X-Tools Interface Builder). And there was a nice surprise! Not sure if anyone noticed, but the RCC software could (will?) allow interval shooting!!! There is evidence in several places: 1. The interface has a button (that is not visible right now) just below the AF / AE toggle button, 2. There is an extra settings dialogue where you can specify start delay, capture period and interval, 3. There are some corresponding strings in the Strings.xml file, 4. There are corresponding .png files
So it looks like it's all in place and ready to go... I wonder why it is disabled. Maybe they want to keep it for an even more professional model and the stuff only gets activated if a camera with a different version is connected...?

Anyways, if anyone has an idea how to active this for the A700, please let us know!
If anyone has found another way to do interval shooting (without a extra gear), please let us know too!

Thank you,

Florian

PS:

Hi,

Ok, so I was able to create an tethered intervalometer through Windows XP.
I don't like scripting so I found a shareware program that records mouse movements and clicks. It's called Auto Macro Recorder and I don't know how long the trial lasts. I suppose there is also freeware out there that does the same.

So with that program I recorded a Macro to go to the already open Sony Remote Camera Control (I guess you can have it closed and let the opening be a part of the macro as long as the position of the window does not move...) and AF and then Shoot. I set the options to repeat 5 times at an interval of 60 seconds. I saved the macro with a unique name. If you are going to start the session right then and there you could just run it. I wanted to schedule it (say you want to record the sunrise and don't feel like waking up early) so I then went into Windows Scheduled Tasks and added the file that was created to start a few minutes later. It worked fine.

So it's a work around if you can position your computer or laptop with your camera for time lapse photography. Not ideal but free...

If I have time to recharge the battery I am going to try to record the sunrise out my home office window this morning. There is no view from my window :-( but it will record the slow lighting of the street. If I don't get to it today I'll try for Monday morning.

Darren
PS the download page shows 30 day trial but the software doesn't show any limit AFAICT but if anyone comes accross any freeware that can do the same thing please let me know. Thanks

PPS I just clicked on the link that Somebody posted (who's on first?) and I suppose USD41 is quite an inexpensive option to do time lapse especially without the hassle of a computer hook up... But hey it's fun to experiment.

Edited by Dumont - 20 January 2008 at 07:55

Dumont wrote: I don't like scripting so I found a shareware program that records mouse movements and clicks. It's called Auto Macro Recorder and I don't know how long the trial lasts. I suppose there is also freeware out there that does the same.

Try AutoIT - quite powerfull and flexible. It has a tool to record a "macro", eventually tweak it later and add some GUI in code. You can also compile the script. I could give you a hand with this but I don't have the Sony software. Let me know if you have any questions.