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Help optimizing M6 mkii timelapses

Started May 20, 2021 | Questions
nineplymaple New Member • Posts: 2
Help optimizing M6 mkii timelapses
1

Just got a shiny new EOS M6 mkii and I am trying to get my timelapse setup dialed in, but I am running into a few oddities. My main focus is night landscapes and star trails, but I would like to extend that to full overnight captures with tricky evening and morning transitions.

- Any exposures 1s or longer end with a "BUSY" screen for a second. My OG EOS M only needed 1s between frames, but the M6 mkii needs 4 full seconds to avoid collisions, leaving huge gaps in star trails. Exposures of 0.8s or less let me shoot again immediately. I have turned off any settings that I think could be related, long exp/high ISO noise reduction, etc. Does anyone know what processing can be turned off to reduce the time between frames?

- For night-only shooting the easiest setup is to set up my shot in manual mode, set the drive mode to continuous, and plug in an external trigger with the shutter button locked. This minimizes the time between frames and is dead simple to set up. I ran a couple battery life tests with 30 second captures and after around 1000 frames the camera stopped shooting. It didn't turn off, just got stuck in the half-shutter mode indefinitely. If I turned the camera off and back on without touching the external trigger the camera starts happily shooting again, so I'm 99% sure this is something in the camera and not a problem with my trigger. Maybe this is a bug in the firmware? ~8 hours before a crash is fine for a night timelapse, but I am nervous that my camera might lock up after only an hour. Any ideas on what might be going wrong here?

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Canon EOS M6 II
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Poulty Regular Member • Posts: 130
Re: Help optimizing M6 mkii timelapses
1

Have you got noise reduction turned on? Are you shooting raw or jpeg?

Someone may correct me but if you are shooting longer exposures with Noice Reduction turned on, it effectively takes a second exposure mating this length of your first, which would result in the busy screen, try turning the feature off.

 Poulty's gear list:Poulty's gear list
Canon EOS M6 II Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Canon 70-300 F4-5.6 IS II Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM +1 more
OP nineplymaple New Member • Posts: 2
Re: Help optimizing M6 mkii timelapses
1

Have you got noise reduction turned on? Are you shooting raw or jpeg?

I have gone through and turned off anything that I think could possibly involve post-capture processing. Long exposure noise reduction, high ISO noise reduction, any lens correction, fixed white balance...

Shooting cRAW, but the behavior is the same for any quality of JPG or RAW.

Advi
Advi Regular Member • Posts: 456
Re: Help optimizing M6 mkii timelapses
1

Beforehand, I'd like to tell you I have a M50, not a M6.

I was inspired to try time-lapse by this video

So, I decided to try it.

M50 has a built-in  time-lapse mode when the dial selects video. Turn on time-lapse video mode, put the camera on a tripod and you ready to go. As simple as that.

First, I selected same exposure during the whole movie.

Check the sunset: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fFp93tRYu9MnHWhhGcV8jO4jbvxdgZ3m/view?usp=sharing

Later, I got this video of the Full moon in April.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AnMIyC3SaxfVwrOOM3_Pqx6ij9jiM0SD/view?usp=sharing

Instead of inserting a link of youtube, I decided to give you the original video produced by the M50, so you have a better idea of the movie quality (no youtube compression artifacts). I used my EF-M 18-150mm lens to shoot these videos.

Some observations: in this mode, all the capture is done through electronic shutter, which means it is done silently without using the mechanical shutter.

I found out that it is wiser to always use a fully charged battery before starting a time-lapse movie, for the camera will be running for a long time.

For capturing cloud movements, I have used option 2 (5 or 6 seconds between shots). Later, I used a custom option, and set to Full HD, 24fps, 6 seconds interval and 999 shots., to get a 1h20min in the last movie (sunrise)

In another thread, some people were worried a single time lapse movie would require shooting 1000 pictures, increasing a lot the number of shots taken with the mechanical shutter. This is not the case, when choosing this option.

Next, I'd like to try to capture the sunrise.

This time, I had to select the option to change exposure at each frame (shot). The time-lapse movie starts when it is pretty dark, and ends with nice sun shine. Check the movie:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ozxXorWAXy_D6WWJf8R24IapbvvaiDT2/view?usp=sharing

But, instead of using the built-in time-lapse video that came in the camera, If you decide to do the whole process manually, as David Bergman suggested, you can use the Alpine Labs Pulse to get your shots.

Warning: these 20s or 30s time-lapse movies are 200Mb to 300Mb to download.

-- hide signature --

Bye

 Advi's gear list:Advi's gear list
Canon EOS M50 Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Canon EF-M 15-45mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM Canon EF-M 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM
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