I want to make a timelap covering about 12 hours. Who has experience with that?
I’m thinking of using Controlmynikon for the settings and to save the iamges on the laptop.
A time of 12 hours=43200sec. When shooting every 5 sec that will be 8640 images.
Shooting raw and an average size of 31MB that will be 260GB. That will mean an external drive.
Shooting jpg and an average size off 6MB that will be 51GB.
Will I be able to convert 8640 images to jpg with PL8? In 1 directory.
The period includes sunset and sundown. I’m thinking of setting wb fixed to 5400 or something like that, a fixed f-nr, a fixed isso and a variable shutterspeed.
The subject is a market, including the building and destruction of it.
I work with 100 photos / directory and still have good performance. You can probably manage with a few presets (adapted to the time of day or night) and then have 86 directories that you can edit one after the other. You can export all files for each directory in one go. You would have to try out how many directories fit into the queue at the same time. You may also be able to put all the edited photos into one project and export the whole project.
I had no problem exporting 4,000 16mpx or 3,000 45mpx raws using PL7/Win and DeepPRIME, with each export taking several hours (i7-14700KF+RTX4070+32GB RAM). Didn’t try 8,000. Some people reported problems with just few hundred files but my guess is they had GPU or CPU heavily tweaked, which got overheated or was faulty. (I’m no longer doing initial selections on PL-exported jpegs, since I started to trust PL8/XD2s, so I don’t go over 400 files now, typically doing 30 file batches to reset my eyes/brain).
PhotoLab does auto-discovery (it registers for kernel generated directory change events on Win and probably on Mac and then filters for filename extensions it recognizes) and auto-import but it does not do auto-export-on-discovery. Maybe Capture One Studio does it – you’ll probably be low on ISO, so you may try it. If you run into a problem with PL and “damaged files”, the tethering software might use the final filename just from the start of transfer or not lock it properly before it’s done (and only then rename it) – this is just a theoretical precaution, never had this problem.
For tethering, Nikon sells Camera Control Pro2 and it has free ‘NX Tether’ software – you may try that. I’ve used CCP2 10+ years ago, the upgrades still work on Win11 (truly perpetual license with long-lasting support), but I started to hate studio work, so no current experience here. Never used Controlmynikon either.
I have no experience with such long interval photography, so I’ll stop here. Just to be sure – check power supply options and blind the viewfinder.
Both thanks for the reply.
I once did shoot the Amsterdam marathon and used the high speed option. I made some 1600 images I believe, and on 1 battery. The camera doesn’t use the back screen between a series of high speed shooting. I had no problems viewing them in PL but I never tried to convert them.
I downloaded a trial of ControlMyNikon. But I had some problems with it. It didn’t save more then 5 images, and sometime nothing at all.
Nikon Camera Control Pro and NX Tether don’t support time lapse as far as I could see.
The in-camera timelapse function of the D750 and Z6ii don’t go further then 7 hours and 59 minutes.
I looked for other software and one of the first was DigiCamControl. I installed it and until now it does what I’m looking for.
Connecting the camera to an external power supply is another problem. I thougt it was not more then a trafo and plug it in the camera. But it exist out off a dummy battery and a trafo, another €150.
The external power I bought for €50. It exists out off an adapter and a dummy battery for the d750 and other camera’s with the same battery. The adapter can be connected directly to the D700.
I took about 7000 pictures. All in 1 directory. PL6, on my laptop, had no problems with it. It took several hours to convert them to jpg. I made a little correction on the raw.
Davinci Resolve created a timelaps, also without a problem.
The only failure was me. The focus was wrong, much too close. I don’t know how that happened. I’ve to do it over. But I know now it’s possible and how to do it.