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Can a serial shutter cable be used for mirror lockup on a XSi (aka 450d)?

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Can a serial shutter cable be used for mirror lockup on a XSi (aka 450d)?

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Serial shutter cable is not yet supported... but I'd be interested to know if it works. Let me know if you try.

Guylain

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Guylain, I'm waiting for the parts to build my own cable to show up. I noticed some shutter shake in some of my eclipse shots, and I wondered if Backyard EOS would be able to use the serial cable to do mirror lockup on my XSi.


Tom

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Mirror lock up is very tricky with the Canon SDK. Canon has not made this easy. It's a special property and *ALL* camera behave differently in a BIG way. It's on the list of features to-do for sure... but it won't be for tomorrow... 6 months from now maybe/probably.

Hope this helps... but keep me posted with the serial cable. I think I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later and give it a good run once and for all

Guylain

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Mirror lock up is very tricky with the Canon SDK. Canon has not made this easy. It's a special property and *ALL* camera behave differently in a BIG way. It's on the list of features to-do for sure... but it won't be for tomorrow... 6 months from now maybe/probably.

Hope this helps... but keep me posted with the serial cable. I think I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later and give it a good run once and for all

Guylain

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Guylain,

I meant to post a reply to this before.

The serial cable I'm referring to is the one connects an RS-232 port to the shutter remote. If you use one of these cables, you can set mirror lockup in the menu, and then just active the shutter twice.

Unfortunately, my attempts to make a cable didn't turn out so well (basically I fried the optical couplers with my soldering iron). After having to order the parts and pay shipping for them, I'm probably going to order one.

I read somewhere that the Canon Rebel XSi (aka 450D) doesn't support mirror lockup via USB.

I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

From the code samples I've seen, it looks like it's just a matter of opening the serial port. Here is one of the pages with sample VB code: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/CanonRelease.html

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Tom,
Don't be so fast giving up on your homemade serial cable, at first mine didn't work because I was too cautious with the solder iron. The resistor and diode looked soldered to pin one of the chip, but only the resistor and diode were soldered together...nothing on the pin. I reheated the joint for about 3 sec and every thing worked fine after that. Actually, the chip's data sheet says it can take up to 10 sec of heat from a 15W iron before it fails.

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Mirror lock up is very tricky with the Canon SDK. Canon has not made this easy. It's a special property and *ALL* camera behave differently in a BIG way. It's on the list of features to-do for sure... but it won't be for tomorrow... 6 months from now maybe/probably.

Hope this helps... but keep me posted with the serial cable. I think I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later and give it a good run once and for all

Guylain

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Guylain,

I meant to post a reply to this before.

The serial cable I'm referring to is the one connects an RS-232 port to the shutter remote. If you use one of these cables, you can set mirror lockup in the menu, and then just active the shutter twice.

Unfortunately, my attempts to make a cable didn't turn out so well (basically I fried the optical couplers with my soldering iron). After having to order the parts and pay shipping for them, I'm probably going to order one.

I read somewhere that the Canon Rebel XSi (aka 450D) doesn't support mirror lockup via USB.

I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

From the code samples I've seen, it looks like it's just a matter of opening the serial port. Here is one of the pages with sample VB code: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/CanonRelease.html

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Tom,
Don't be so fast giving up on your homemade serial cable, at first mine didn't work because I was too cautious with the solder iron. The resistor and diode looked soldered to pin one of the chip, but only the resistor and diode were soldered together...nothing on the pin. I reheated the joint for about 3 sec and every thing worked fine after that. Actually, the chip's data sheet says it can take up to 10 sec of heat from a 15W iron before it fails.

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Jim,

Thanks for the encouragement. I actually broke off the pins on the optocoupler, so I don't think that's fixable. I did, however, find a local place that had them, so I'm going to try again. Hopefully I'll have better luck this time. Either way though, I've now found a place that I can pop out to after work and pick up more parts if I wreck something.

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I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

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I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

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Tom,

My understanding is that mirror lockup is most useful for short exposure, such as when doing planetary imaging. For long exposures of a few minutes and above the movement (if any) of the mirror slap will be washed out and mirror lockup would have little or no benefits. I’ll be first to admit though that I’ve done most of my imaging without mirror lockup so my understanding may not be the norm. I also understand that this may differ from one camera to the other and perhaps the stability of one’s setup as well.

Any thoughts?

Guylain

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Guylain,

I'm really just starting out the long road to decent astrophotography, but I have already noticed issues with camera shake from the mirror opening and closing. It does seem to be primarily on brighter targets like planets and the moon where a webcam is probably better used, but I have found it to be an issue.

Tom

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Guylain,

Great looking program, I'm probably going to buy it. Right now I use Nebulosity for frame and focus and then switch over to the Canon software for imaging. Looks like I can just use one program now. One question though, can you have the program shoot one second subs (or longer) repeatedly in frame and focus mode without saving the image? This is a neat feature of Nebulosity that helps frame objects as you are moving the mount in situations where live view isn't sensitive enough to pick up the stars.

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