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Eos utility 3 wasting imaging time

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#1 AstroWill2023

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 04:43 PM

Hi all, not too sure how to explain this problem but I'm going to try my best. I use a canon eos 850d with EOS utility 3 to image, i connect my canon to my macbook via a 2m usb to usb-c cable. However my computer seems to be taking a very, very long time to download an image once it has been taken (sometimes 1 min plus), and since the camera cannot take images while sending a photo to my computer it is wasting over half of my clear nights (very annoying). Has anyone experienced this problem before or know any solutions?
Thanks in advance,
Will.

#2 unimatrix0

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 05:20 PM

 

via a 2m usb to usb-c cable

 

Your description says the problem. 2 meter long USB cable.  Data rides on electric current  and each of those images are over 50megabytes in size the Voltage is provided by your laptop USB plug, and it supposed to be around 5-6Volts.     In a nutshell,  your laptop+cable+camera simply isn't really designed to do this, or it just gonna be unreliable. 

 

 

That's why most people use a mini PC with very short USB cables or use a powered USB cable which needs a separate power source to be plugged in, but those solutions are a gamble, whether they work out well or not. 


Edited by unimatrix0, 04 February 2025 - 05:22 PM.


#3 Dynan

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 06:39 PM

Have you tried BYEOS? Great program for imaging with Canon or Nikon. There is a free trial also.

 

I'm using it right now for testing a new setup and downloads take only seconds.



#4 james7ca

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 06:54 PM

Two meters is well within the spec for USB3 so I don't think the cable is the problem. I use ten foot USB3 cables all of the time for my planetary work with a 20 megapixel camera and the transfer rates are fine. That said, it is always possible to get a "bad" USB cable (or any type of cable) so one of the first things I'd try is a new cable. However, the obvious "solution" would be to save the images to the camera's SD card and then transfer the files with a card swap.

In any case, according to a few online reviews the ESO 850D/Rebel T8i only has a USB2 interface at a slow 480 Mbit/sec so any transfers over that kind of connection are going to be pretty slow and certainly no better than about 50MB per second. Given that this is an APS-C camera with a 24 megapixel sensor that would mean an absolute best case of approximately one second for a file transfer of an uncompressed RAW image. However, 50MB per second may be somewhat optimistic and of course the file also needs to be saved on the computer so perhaps something between one and two seconds per image (near best case).

So, one minute plus sounds too long and I suspect this may be a software or firmware issue with the EOS. I’d try a reinstall of the Canon software on your MacBook and perhaps a second/new cable.

[update]Fixed my math for USB2 transfer rates[/update]

Edited by james7ca, 04 February 2025 - 07:43 PM.


#5 Dynan

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 07:17 PM

I didn't know you have a Mac Book. BYEOS is Windows only. Apologies.



#6 sharkmelley

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 07:42 PM

Do you have long exposure noise reduction mistakenly switched on? For a 1 min exposure it will then wait 1 more minute while taking the dark. Following that it will then download.
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#7 bignerdguy

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Posted 04 February 2025 - 08:27 PM

Two things: 

 

1. Your cameras does not use USB 3.x, it relies on USB 2.x specs so a 2 meter cable may not work correctly unless it connects to a powered hub with a shorter cable from the hub to the Camera.

2. Have you left enabled the noise reduction settings in the camera?  There are several.  If these are enabled then the actual photo shooting time is doubled since it will take 1 exposure you have set then a second exposure of the same length for a dark frame which it uses to remove dark current noise from the image.  This means that if you take, say a 30 second image, it will take a single 30 second light image then a second 30 second dark frame and combine them, then the results will downloadable.  This makes a standard computer led session take for.ev.er to download the 1 image.  Turn off ALL on camera noise reduction and take dark and bias frames on your computer instead.


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#8 james7ca

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Posted Yesterday, 03:34 AM

I'm completely mystified as to the continued comments concerning cable length. USB3 supports up to three meters and USB2 goes even further to 5 meters (all passive and without a hub). So, I don't see how cable length should matter since the OP said they were using a two meter cable and their camera is USB2 only. That said, SuperSpeed+ USB-C (10Gbps) can be limited to one meter and Thunderbolt is similarly short (in allowed passive cable lengths, but only when running at the higher speeds supported by those standards).


Edited by james7ca, Yesterday, 03:36 AM.

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#9 michael8554

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Posted Yesterday, 05:52 AM

EOS Utility should download in a couple of secs max.

 

And cable length doesn't appear to be the problem.

 

So as already said, you may have accidently enable "Long exposure Noise Reduction" in the Custom Settings menus.

 

Read the description of this setting in the Instruction Manual


Edited by michael8554, Yesterday, 05:53 AM.



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