LENR Support; especially for Canon 6D and 5D

[travmo]

I know that this topic has been brought up, and I think it has been dismissed, but I’d like to make an appeal to reassess. For those of us with only DSLRs and who shoot in areas where the temperature changes 10°C or more  over the night, in camera LENR can be extremely beneficial. The Canon 6D only takes a dark frame after the fourth light frame, applies the single dark to the four lights, and does a great job with noise removal. The Canon 5D takes a dark frame after the fifth light frame. To me, that’s really efficient. I’m back to using an intervalometer for controlling exposures and I’d much rather use BYE. Could a feature be added to BYE to engage the shutter without acquiring camera status, kind of like the intervalometer does? I understand the two interfaces are nothing alike.

Thank you for your consideration. 
 

Sincerely,

Travis

[astroman133]

Travis,

Where I live, overnight temperature drops of up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit are not unusual, so I understand your pain.

How long are your exposures? BYE is pretty tolerant of slow downloads, which is how LENR could appear.

What happens when you image with BYE, with LENR enabled in the camera? Does BYE see the camera as busy when it is capturing a dark frame?

[travmo]

Thank you for responding, astroman133:

Wow - 40° is quite a swing!

I’ve tested exposure times of 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and five minutes. I programmed BYE to take four lights, with a pause time greater than the exposure time associated with the forth light frame (in an attempt to allow time for the dark frame, which is how I do it with the intervalometer).  I also pressed the Loop button.  I am only storing the photos on the camera.  Yes, BYE sees the camera as busy after the first light frame and errors out [exposure time] after the first light frame, but before taking the second light frame. I am really new to BYE, so I could be doing things wrong. The Canon 6D only buffers light frames if it receives a shutter activate command within one or two seconds following the last light frame, otherwise it initiates a dark frame. I wonder if the root of the issue is the time delay between the end of the light frame and when (or how) BYE issues the next shutter activate command and when (or if) the camera receives the next shutter activate command.

Thanks again!

Best Regards,

Travis

[astroman133]

The camera tells BYE when the image is ready to download, but if you are saving to the PC, it may take too much time to download it to avoid the the camera automatically taking dark frame. I am not a BYE developer, but I know a bit about the Canon SDK. It could be that working well with LENR may be impossible, due to limitations of the  Canon SDK. Also, it may work with 10 second and 30 second exposures, but not work with a 5 minute exposure.

I has thought that several years ago that BYE developers lengthened the amount of time after the exposure time to accommodate users who wanted to use LENR, but perhaps I am not remembering correctly. If not, I hope that someone sets me straight.

[travmo]

Thanks again!

To clarify, I’m not downloading photos to the PC. I agree with you - it’s highly possible that the function call in the SDK doesn’t relinquish control back to BYE in time to prevent the dark frame. Maybe I’ll dive into the SDK and see what I can learn. 

[travmo]

I’ve been playing with the canon SDK. When LENR is enabled, the SDK reports the camera as busy for approximately Bulb Time + 1.5 seconds after the shutter close command is issued even though the camera is not actually doing anything.  In fact, while the SDK reports busy, I can continue to take exposures with a remote or the shutter button until the buffer fills at which time the camera takes a dark frame. I’ll post to the Canon team and see what they say. 

[astroman133]

Any "posts to the Canon team" will not be returned except with a standard disclaimer that the SDK is unsupported software.

Good luck.

[travmo]

Thanks for the heads up!