Did BYE 3.1.6 Lock-Up While Shooting The Milky Way?

[JTWaters]

I was shooting wide angle shots of the Milky Way and BYE or my Canon 6D did something odd.  I started to capture the images and about a third of the way through the 6D stopped capturing and downloading the images but BYE kept working.  It’s almost like the connection was lost but BYE would reported that.  No error messages were displayed.  I had to stop the run.  Clouds started to come in and I didn’t have time to rerun the sequence and do debugging.  Not sure what's going on.

 

Setup is as follows:

- Canon 6D with Wide Angle Lens set to “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” and “High ISO Speed NR”.

- Canon 6D FW Ver - 1.1.6

- 3 meter Active USB Cable

- BYE set to… Exposures – 30, Shutter – BULB, Aperture – f/2.8, Duration – 45, ISO – 12800, Pause – 120

- BYE set to capture 6D RAW and JPG and generate TIFF files

 

 

Future Feature Request

Can “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” and “High ISO Speed NR” be set through BYE?

 

Jim Waters

Phoenix, AZ

[JTWaters]

I use 2 USB cables.  A very lightweight (flimsy) 24" cable plugged into the 6D and attached to the tripod.  I do this to eliminate and strain on the camera.   I then connect this to the 3 meter Active USB cable.  I couldn't reproduce this problem today.  Perhaps theirs an intermittent problem with this short cable or the 6D did something funny.

 

 

Thanks all for the input.

 

 

Jim

 

[astroman133]

Jim,

 

Long Exposure Noise Reduction and High ISO Noise Reduction can only be set through the camera's menus.  It is recommended that they be turned off for astrophotography, anyway.

 

I am not sure what you mean by BYE kept working but no images were downloaded. That seems to contradict what I know about how it behaves.

 

Did it only happen once, or can you repeat it? Sudden disconnects are usually either due to battery issues or cabling issues.

[JTWaters]

Yep - I know these should be turned off but I was taking very high ISO single shots and not stacking them.  After I processed them in LightRoom I wanted to make a short movie.  

 

By stopped downloading them, BYE stopped beeping when a shot was complete and didn't display the image.  Nothing was being downloaded to BYE but it kept running through the sequence. The 6D was powered off a 12 VDC deep cycle battery and I didn't run out of laptop disk space.  The 6D was still on.  These were the first things I checked.  I only selected TIFF just to see what the images looked like.

 

Jim

[astroman133]

Nothing was being downloaded, but was BYE operating the shutter? If so then it seems likely that the problem was with BYE's Background Worker process. It is possible that your images  are in the BackyardTemp\Download folder, just as they were downloaded by BYE.

[s3igell]

The 6D also has one of the most "Complex" implementations of LENR.

 

6D LENR is offered with either "AUTO" or "ON" setting - the latter applies LENR to any Exposure longer than 1 sec and the former (AUTO) applies LENR to exposures longer than 1 sec ONLY IF the Camera decides "Typical Long Exposure Noise has been Detected".

 

The 6D is also one of the Canon DSLRs that offers "Multiple-to-One" LENR - if you interrupt the LENR Exposure with another Shutter Click then the Camera will move the Previous Light Exposure into a Buffer and start the New Exposure.  This is repeated until the Buffer is FULL, at which time the DSLR "Insists" on performing one LENR Dark Exposure, and applying that Dark to each of the Images in the Buffer.  Then those Images are quickly written to Card, and the Buffer empties to start over again.  For the 6D, this reportedly allows 3:1 LENR Exposures (some have claimed 4:1), while the new releases of the 5D sport a Buffer that allows 5:1.

(I haven't tested this Buffered LENR on my 7DmkII, yet...) 

[JTWaters]

I stopped hearing the 6D shutter operate and BYE beep.  This is what alerted me.  Nothing in the Download folder.  I will try to reproduce things tonight.

 

Attached are the log files.  I stopped BYE during the last log file.

 

Jim

logfile-20160625-23h27m01s980-backgroundworker-5744-2016-06-25.txt

logfile-20160625-23h26m55s752-4388-2016-06-25.txt

[admin]

I stopped hearing the 6D shutter operate and BYE beep.  This is what alerted me.  Nothing in the Download folder.  I will try to reproduce things tonight.

 

Attached are the log files.  I stopped BYE during the last log file.

 

Jim

 

These logfiles are empty, a simple BYE startup, went into settings, and close BYE.

[admin]

You have an odd behavior there for sure.  The only thing that comes close this is if the camera got disconnection for a millisecond or so.  But I'm not convinced of that because the SDK would have frozen and from past experience BYE would not have continued with the plan.

 

I did have a similar issue about 4 years ago with my 40D.  At a very specific angle the shutter would not actuate... the command was sent and the camera reported no errors but the shutter stayed close.  My only way out was to turn off/on the camera again.  I seems as if there was a dead spot where the shutter would simply not work.