WeMacro rail and burst bracketing

[danybittel]

Hi

The documentation says burst bracketing is only supported with the StackShot rail.
Any plans to support the WeMacro rail? Or is that technically impossible.

[Catherine]

Hi, no, it's not possible, Stackshot allows for movement speed control and Wemacro does not.

[danybittel]

Thanks for the prompt answer!
I understand, I guess I'll have to get a StackShot to speed my workflow up.

[Catherine]

What camera model do you want to use it with?

[danybittel]

I'm using a Nikon Z8.. I have gotten a StackShot now and it works in regular mode.
But the "Enable burst bracketing" is grayed out still?

I wanted to check the "menu -> Tools -> Burst bracketing", but there is no such menu?
I'm on windows, latest version, just downloaded.

[Catherine]

That's why I asked about your camera model, this feature only exists in the previous version of Helicon Remote, but that version doesn't support mirrorless cameras (like the Z8). Sorry. We'll add it in the future but I'm not sure about the time estimate, likely not in the nearest future.

[danybittel]

Well that's unfortunate. I will switch to using the StackShot controller directly, which can do continuous shooting too. I'll miss Helicon Remote, looking forward once the feature is supported!

After reading your Docs and figuring out how it works, I think you are overengineer this a bit. As a user all I care about is setting begin / end, then trigger and shoot at a given fps. Ideally I'd want to set the fps and the speed of the rail. If a camera has limited support for different fps, or only "high speed", "low speed".. show that in the GUI. If the rail has only a single speed, show that also in the GUI. That way the user can test what he/she has and figure out if it's useful. I don't think you need to calculate fps and try to map that to speed of the rail, interval / shots GUI, just gray that out once a user uses burst mode. That would simplify the internals and you could support all motors out of the box, even if they only have a single speed.

As a bonus, if you can figure out how many shots were taken (?).. you could show the interval *after* the stack has been shot.

[Catherine]

As a user all I care about is setting begin / end, then trigger and shoot at a given fps.

That is exactly how it works, except you can't control the fps, it's an intrinsic characteristic of the camera. At most you can select low/high speed, if supported by the camera, and you can do that in the tool. But you cannot set the speed because speed = distance divided by shooting time, distance is set by A/B points and time = number of shots x fps. FPS is also not a constant, so the tool will measure the factual value with your current settings and calculate the speed the match that.

Which part do you feel is overengineered?

[danybittel]

I may misunderstand how it works, as I can't test it. But from what I gather it works by first measuring the effective fps (Through tool menu). Then you set start / end point + the interval or nr of shots. Then Helicon Remote calculates the necessary speed of the rail to reach that. Is this correct?

My suggestion was to basically just set the speed of the rail manually (if it can be adjusted), otherwise you have a fixed speed. So in worst case the fps is fixed, given by the camera and the rails speed is fixed.. My point is that, that's still useful, because the fps can be adjusted, through different settings directly on the camera (actually the Z8 has quite a few options to set, ranging from 1fps . 120fps).. one may even try a smaller aperture to need less photos. And if it doesn't work, the user knows where the limit is and can upgrade the camera or rail.

What I'm suggesting is that you cannot set the number of shots or the interval once you're in burst mode. The number of photos will be whatever the camera was able to capture. I hope that's clearer?

[Catherine]

You could do that, but it seems not very useful and not at all how automated focus bracketing works in other modes in Helicon Remote. By adjusting the rail speed to be exactly correct, it works the same way as other focus bracketing modes. The speed cannot be controlled manually as it is determined by the fps.

[danybittel]

I do photogrammetry, so shooting 90 - 120 stacks at a time. With the regular mode it takes around 3-4 hours, now with continuous shooting just 30 min for everything.

My setup: the StackShot, runs around 30mm continuously. Simultaneously I trigger the camera from NX Tether (Nikons thetering app). The Z8 runs at 5fps.. it could do 10fps easily or up to 120 fps with raw images. The point is, that the rail is now the slowest component, I maxed out it's speed.. everything else (aperture, light, number of shots, interval, fps..) is modeled around the max speed of the StackShot.

I hope that is helpful, how I'd like to use Helicon Remote.

[Catherine]

I see, but that doesn't change the principle of operation: the rail speed is calculated for the camera's framerate, and if your framerate is faster than the rail can move you'll max out the rail speed just like you already have. We can't make it move faster than the hardware supports.

[danybittel]

Totally.. but I could use other rails / stepper motors that go faster.
So supporting more motors in burst mode would be useful here too, even if limited with a fixed speed.