Anyone using a Z6 for macro?

Donald B wrote:

mawyatt2002 wrote:

Michael,

As Don mentioned my setups generally are not for portable use and involve many images. Camera mechanical shutter wear out is a concern and why I got the Z7 to use the fully electronic shutter like the D850.

However I've developed a vertical and horizontal "Table Top" setup that is somewhat portable based around the superb WeMacro Vertical Stands and is battery operated. You could set these up anywhere in less than 5 minutes, I often setup on the kitchen table or 2 foot square lamp table for a quick test or stack before I get chased off

These are based upon the new controllers I'm developing that operate with a Raspberry Pi and everything operates from 12 volts. WeMacro has a small LiOn 18650 based battery pack that runs the entire setup for hours.

So portable operation is possible, but not handheld and not what you would normally consider for field macro work with flowers or insects.

Also use the Nikon D850, D800E & D500, but for massive S&S efforts use the D850 or soon the Z7 for the mentioned shutter wear out reasons.

Best,

Your going to have a blast with silent shutter, but are restricted to low shutter speeds. my em12 is 1/50sec my em52 was 1/20 sec.

Don

i just read that the z7 cant use a flash in silent shutter mode

Agree it is very nice to not have to worry about shutter wear out when doing 30,000 image sessions!! A side benefit is the total lack of shutter noise, which becomes apparent when you utilize the silent mode stepper motor control using the Trinamic stacking controllers under development (actually already developed).

Been using EFCS since the D500 came out in early 2017 and later with D850 when it came out. The D850 can do fully Electronic Shutter (front and rear) with no mechanical shutter (D500 can't do electronic rear curtain, must be mechanical), even between exposures...so totally mechanical movement free. Same goes for Z6 and Z7. There are a number of cameras that have this feature, except Canon I believe, I'm sure they will soon though.

Most high end cameras block the hot shoe under these electronic shutter modes, there have been many discussions of such over at the PM, also think here at DPR on the reasoning. Developed a work around circuit back in 2017 to allow Strobe/Flash use with EFCS with most cameras, so exposure time isn't an issue since the flash does the exposure. Later this concept was including in stacking controllers, including mine based on the mentioned Trinamic (and Pololu) devices.

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36194&highlight=

Since you are involved with stacking and using objectives producing very nice images, these Trinamic controllers might be worth consideration. I've just delivered a number of the controllers to some folks all over, very positive feedback. They work beautifully with the Wemacro rails too, extremely smooth and quite!

Here's quote from someone in the UK that just got the Trinamic controller.

Just an update on my experience with the Trinimac / Raspberry Pi configuration as produced by Mike.

Stunned! .... and very annoyed that I spent sooo long designing my microcontroller based on the Arduino and BigEasyDriver (AD4988 chip).

Totally silent operation on my WeMacro rail, just beginning to get to grips with the literally hundreds of configuration commands but the prospect of 256 microsteps, silent operation, load sensing, auto torque etc etc etc make this a no-brainer for me. Cheap and cheerful Chinese drivers a thing of the past!

Best,