Camera Battery Drainage When Connected

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eyabru
Posts: 2
Joined: 30.12.2020 22:49

Camera Battery Drainage When Connected

Post by eyabru »

Hi everyone.
You may all have noticed that connecting the camera to the computer while using Helicon Remote drains the battery of the camera fairly quickly. Normally that does not matter much as the normal focus stacking process is fairly short, time-wise. But last night I thought I'd use the time lapse feature of the program to try to catch flowers blooming during the night. I set it up for a shot every 7.5 min for some 16 hours. I used a battery adaptor for my Canon EOS R camera and connected it to an external battery pack to make sure my camera would have enough power to last through the night, as I had done when I shot a sequence of 2,000 pictures for star trailing a few weeks ago. But it seems that keeping the camera connected to the computer uses up more power than even this external battery setup can supply. So after some 5 hours I noticed that the camera had been disconnected from Helicon Remote and I decided to shut everything down.
My question is: does this depend on the Helicon software or is it something related to the camera?
Tonight I'm repeating the process using an intervalometer...No connection to the computer!
Thank you all!
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Catherine
Posts: 1156
Joined: 29.04.2019 22:38

Re: Camera Battery Drainage When Connected

Post by Catherine »

The problem is simply that activating live view in the camera drains the battery, and Helicon Remote turns live view on by default (both because it's convenient to work with and is the right choice in most circumstances, and because it's required for some functions to work).

The solution for your case, and any similar one, is turn live view off once you finish setting up your bracketing series or time lapse series. Right before you press "Start shooting", click the "live view" button to turn live view off. Now Helicon Remote will be only turning live view on briefly when necessary, instead of keeping it activated the whole time.
eyabru
Posts: 2
Joined: 30.12.2020 22:49

Re: Camera Battery Drainage When Connected

Post by eyabru »

Thank you Catherine for taking the time to reply.
I will try your suggestion for my next time lapse.
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