I’m please to be able to say that you can now download
the latest release of DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control. This is release 3.0 – the Happy New Year! release.
Upgrading to this version will get you:
- Time Lapse!
Yes, at last, I’ve implemented — admittedly very very basic and boring — but still functional — time lapse. If you have a D300 or other camera with time lapse built in then this is boring, but for those of you with D40 and similiar then this gets you what you need to do all those fun time lapse videos.
- Persistent download directory
It now remembers the directory you selected and stays with it when you restart the application.
- File name prefix
This field allows you to specify something to prefix the file names with. The idea is that you use it when shooting a lot of people, say at a school or fair, and as each person comes up you can just type in their name, shoot a few shots, then change the name for the next person. Then each file name will have the person’s name on it.
- Reconnect camera without restarting
If you need to reconnect the camera; say the usb cable came unplugged, or you forgot to change to M mode before starting, you can now just click again on Select Camera” rather than restart the script.
Ok so that’s pretty much it — plus some small tweaks and bug fixes. I’ll write or do a video soon with some howto time lapse, and how to actually turn it into video using free tools.
Until then, Happy New Year!
PS. If you’ve found this site and/or my scripts helpful, please do help to spread the word by telling a friend, posting a message on a forum, blogging about it or similiar — the more people who hear about it the better! Thanks very much for your help which I greatly appreciate.
I am having a bit of trouble getting camera control 3.0 to work on lightroon 2.0. Should I expect to be able to take a shot and then have it appear immediatly in lightroom.
Thanks,
This program you made is simply great! I just downloaded it and i’m giong to try it asap… Just a little info: is’nt il possible to implement HDR shots? I meen, my D70 takes only 3 shots in bracketing, while i’d need some more, at least 9, at different fstops. I think it should be easy enoght to implement it since you have full control on exposure and compensation, say set the middle point ad shoot +/-1 fstop for 9 pics, or set the initial point and add 1 fstop from there. The only important thing would be to do it as fast as possible to avoid moving things…
Thanks, Christian 🙂
Alex, yes that should work — you need to tell Lightroom which directory to import from.
Bingo7, bracketing is certainly something I want to do — next major version should include that. I have to design a user interface to let you choose different ways to change the exposure per shot, number of shots, sequence and so on. Obviously I won’t be able to make it as fast as built-in to the camera — but probably good enough for some purposes.
I’d love to do this right away but other demands on my time press as well. Not least of which is earning a living!
Hi Raymond
Hope this mail keeps you in the pink
Thanks for the wonderful script. All works fine except when I clicked on the image in the preview pane, the CC ver3.0 hangs and when I wanted to force it to close after a period of no activity, i could not as it does not appear in the task manager. I have to restart the computer in order to close CC
No major issue here but thought you may just wanna know about it. Folders to export and the preview in windows explorer and Bridge has no issues and I was able to view all photos
Am using xp sp3 and the next thing i wanna try is to connect my D300 using a 10 feet USB cable and see if it works. Just wanna see how far it could go. Of course, I would be dreaming of going wireless
Yes, I will spread the message around. Good job Ray
Edward Chan – Malaysia
7th Jan 10.10 am
Edward, I’ve got mine with a 16ft usb cable (repeater) plus my normal 4ft cable and it works fine.
The repeater cost me 4 dollars in the US, I’m sure you can get it cheaper in Malaysia.
Edward, thanks for the note about the crash/hang — I just posted how to kill the task in such situations (it is mshta.exe) so you don’t need to reboot. I will try to find out the reason though — what is the folder name you are downloading to?
Daniel, I wish I could get such a long repeater to work, the one I bought didn’t work properly.
Daniel, now that u mentioned it, yes we need a repeater as the connection could only go that far. I had one stashed somewhere in which i was using it for a USB videocam many years back. Thanks for the update.
Raymond,
I used your default folder mydoc/mypictures. Thanks for the update
Cheers
Rgds
Edward Chan
Jan 7th
1.35 noon
There is a bug if there is a space in the folder name. I’ll have to fix that.
hey! I made some changes on 3.0!
I couldnt wait for the brackets thingy so I tried out VBS for the first time and it worked for me 🙂
Made some changes on the template and the style sheet too!
Lemme know if its workin alright!
My coding skills are kinda lame…
http://free-your-mind.com/chrisscholz/Camera_Control_3.1.rar
I just found this from a link in the Amateur Photographer forum website – it looks like a great tool.
Just a quickie to bingo7 and if you plan to update the tool for HDR…. for HDR you need to use THE SAME APERTURE for all shots! This keeps the depth of field the same in each one so the images can be blended; you must bracket using variable shutter speed alone.
Just found your program it looks perfect for me. Trying to use it with a D50, but when i start it says that the camera has not been found and that windows should recognise it as a camera and not a drive. How do you do this? Windows XP recognises it only as a drive at the moment.
Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Graham H
Ok so i have found the answer. It is a setting in the camera. Look for USB and set it to PTP (Picture transport protocol. Not sure that it is working yet, but it is finding the camera now at least.
D50 seems to be a model often with problem connecting, do try installing the Nikon drivers (e.g. CD that came with your camera) if it still won’t connect in PTP mode.
Definitely connecting ok now, just not had a chance to test the rest of the program.
Your script looks great , but does it work with Lightroom v1 ? Thanks .
John, I don’t know but I suppose so if LR1 can do watched folders.
Great piece of software many thanks.
I don’t know if it has been posted before but something I found that was driving me nuts:
When plugging the camera remember to change the USB setting in the camera from mass storage to ptp otherwise camera control will not detect the camera.
Thanks