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Camera Ready to take next picture signal?


Jim Towne

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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

 

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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. 

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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.  

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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