Camera Ready to take next picture signal?

[Jim Towne]

Hello Everyone. I am a total newbee so I apologize up front if i violate and etiquette. Here is my question.

Symptom: I have a controller that operates the shutter on my Fuji X-T200 camera so that it takes a picture every 2 seconds in sync with other events. After about 50 +- pictures are taken, a red dot comes on the camera display and it wont take another picture, until it finishes counting down from 5-7 seconds and it is now out of sync with what I have been doing by 1-2 events. The memory card I use is a SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 MB/s 128GB.

 

Questions:

Q1. My first guess is that it is a buffer filling up and then flushing to my SD memory card.

Is this correct?

 

Q2. Is there a way to configure the settings in my camera so it won’t buffer? But will store the picture to the SD immediately after its taken.

 

Q3. Will a faster memory SD card speed up the process? ( I think probably not as it is probably the buffer memory speed of the camera that is the limiting factor.)

 

Q4. The best solution is if I can find a signal or some sort, electrical, relay contact, blue-tooth or wireless, that tells me the camera is ready to take a (the next) picture.

 

Thank you so much,

Sincerely, Jim Towne

 

[Olaf W.]

Welcome to our forum. I‘ve removed your personal e-mail address from your comment to prevent spam etc.

Concerning your question, it‘s unlikely that the buffer of the X-T200 can hold 50+ photos. There must be another reason for the behavior and I supect something like reorganizing data on the card and/or creating new folders. 

[Greybeard]

Interesting question - I don't have an X-T200 to test but I'd suggest you try setting the camera so that its writing a jpg only - so that you could be sure it would write to the card in under 2 seconds - if you get the same problem it would imply its something other than the buffer.

[Jim Towne]

On 11/29/2022 at 1:06 AM, Olaf W. said:

Welcome to our forum. I‘ve removed your personal e-mail address from your comment to prevent spam etc.

Concerning your question, it‘s unlikely that the buffer of the X-T200 can hold 50+ photos. There must be another reason for the behavior and I supect something like reorganizing data on the card and/or creating new folders. 

Thank you for that and the suggestions. I will give some thought as to how I can  test this further. If I remember correctly I ran 12 batches of 80-100 events. The events/pictures were all stored in 1 folder. I changed the file prefix for each batch. I shot in RAW mode. I believe I experienced the FUJI RED DOT once every 3 or 4 batches. When I would rerun the batch I don't believe the red dot reappeared for another 3-4 batches. So when I was finished all the events/pictures were in 1 folder with different prefixes on the file names.  

[Jim Towne]

On 11/29/2022 at 2:29 AM, Greybeard said:

Interesting question - I don't have an X-T200 to test but I'd suggest you try setting the camera so that its writing a jpg only - so that you could be sure it would write to the card in under 2 seconds - if you get the same problem it would imply its something other than the buffer.

Thank you so much for your reply. The red dot appeared whether I was shooting in RAW or highest def JPG.

 I will give some thought as to how I can  test this further. If I remember correctly I ran 12 batches of 80-100 events. The events/pictures were all stored in 1 folder. I changed the file prefix for each batch. I shot in RAW mode. I believe I experienced the FUJI RED DOT once every 3 or 4 batches. When I would rerun the batch I don't believe the red dot reappeared for another 3-4 batches. So when I was finished all the events/pictures were in 1 folder with different prefixes on the file names. 

SO I think in the whole process of 800-1000 events /pictures I experienced the "FUJI Red Dot count down" 3-4 times.

[Jim Towne]

On 11/29/2022 at 4:53 AM, cpX said:

With what shutter speed do you take the photos?

The setting was on auto. The lighting was different for each event/picture. As I watched the display during the processes all of them were typically less than 1/4 second. It displayed the shutter speed for each event as it took it and the display was on that event for 2 seconds. HMMM next run I will watch to see if this might be occurring if there is a total BLACK event. Thanks. P.S. I dont think there was but I might be wrong. 

[Jim Towne]

14 hours ago, cpX said:

You can use your computer to search for the slowest shutter speed in the EXIF data of the photos. Then you know if the time intervals were too long or not.

Awesome! Thank you.

[Jim Towne]

RESOLUTION: to Fuji X-T200 Red Dot 5 second count down (I think 8-)

I was able to book some tech time with Fujifilm tech guys at https://fujifilm-x.com/en-ca/tech-time/.

It was a week and a half away until my next day off so I would try to find a way to consistently reproduce the problem. So I thought I would just turn the camera on and take a picture every 2 secs until the buffer filed up and then the RED DOT count down as it flushed to the SD card. So I turned on the camera, pressed the shutter button and on the first shot encountered the THE RED dot count down. Not what I expected, but totally consistent with the next 2 presses of the shutter button. Hmmm, oh forgot to remove lens cap. Newbee user problem? Absolutely.

 

The short story is this; the automatic features of Portrait, Shutter and Aperture generate a RED DOT count down while the camera is trying to find a picture in a black screen (lens cap on). I went on to do various tests with lighting that allowed me to vary the length of the count down from 2 seconds to about 30 seconds. I was using the camera in Portrait auto mode originally with a specialty lens that would not feed the camera the aperture or focus information, but the automatic shutter speed feature was a fantastic bonus. My lightning fast brain, not, took me to YouTube and the Fuji X-T200 manual to do some more research. Aperture mode gives only automatic shutter speed which was what I wanted and Manual mode turns off ALL automatic features, so never a Red Dot. While investigating on YouTube I found that you could add various sizes of Grid to your display, which greatly helps me in having a consistent setup. Also found that it had a build in Level feature (but not Pitch), again for consistent setup (thanks Pal2tech). I also found that with the correct charger connected to the USB port will allow me to run all day long with out having to change the battery and re-setup everything after a couple of hours.

 

Today I had the ZOOM meeting with the Francis at Fuji Tech Time. He confirmed everything I though I had figured out and big bonus We changed the configuration setting CAMERA>ISO>200 to CAMERA>ISO>AUTO1 with settings of DEFSENSE 200, MAXSENSE 6400 and MAXSHUTTER 1/4. So then when I use the Aperture setting (auto shutter time) any Red Dot is about a quarter of a second and i get Auto Shutter speed. Bottom line is I can speed up my event process almost double and “Red Dot countdown” is now a non-issue.

 

The Fuji tech support was way above expectation. Thanks Francis, you are awesome!

 

P.S. The best solution still is if I can find a signal of some sort, electrical (Hot Shoe?), relay contact, blue-tooth or wireless, that tells me the camera is ready to take a (or the next) picture. Then I can Just let the camera Clock the whole process. If anyone can point me to an USB or Bluetooth API, then I can write an APP.

Thank you for all your sugestions.