Intervalometer for G7 X (was Re: G7 X porting thread )

SparkyCola

Intervalometer for G7 X (was Re: G7 X porting thread )

« on: 17 / February / 2018, 10:43:10 »

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Testing CHDK compliled for three different Canon firmware versions is pretty much pointless. ...

Thanks I didn't know this.

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This is unfortunately a well know issue. Nobody has found a good way to make the Canon UI play nicely with the CHDK UI

Ok that doesn't sound too good. I suppose there's a separate thread for this to check out though.

Anyway is there some kind of checklist for features? I couldn't get one script to run yet (sunsetF16), but I have do some further investigation in order to really find out where it's failing.

« Last Edit: 17 / February / 2018, 15:14:34 by reyalp »

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waterwingz

11887

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #1 on: 17 / February / 2018, 10:52:58 »

Quote from: SparkyCola on 17 / February / 2018, 10:43:10

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This is unfortunately a well know issue. Nobody has found a good way to make the Canon UI play nicely with the CHDK UI
Ok that doesn't sound too good. I suppose there's a separate thread for this to check out though.

That's just the way it is - AFAIK there is no seperate thread about it. It comes up in almost every camera specific porting thread though as newbies discover the limitation.

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Anyway is there some kind of checklist for features?

Are you looking for a list of things CHDK can do? The CHDK User Manual might be a good place to start. If you are volunteering to test stuff, this port is pretty stable as it was created by a very senior CHDK developer. So just using the port for things you want to do or play with, and reporting anything you find to be usual would be the most helpful.

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I couldn't get one script to run yet (sunsetF16), but I have do some further investigation in order to really find out where it's failing.

Sounds good. If you want help with that, you'll need to post a lot more detail about what you did and what you observed.

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

SparkyCola

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #2 on: 17 / February / 2018, 12:07:24 »

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Sounds good. If you want help with that, you'll need to post a lot more detail about what you did and what you observed.

So first, I copied all files (except propcase.lua, if I overwrite the original and much bigger one I get an error unsupported propset in line 16 of propset.lua when I try to run the script) that the script provides into the chdk folder. If I run it and it shows script started, then I hear that something get's loose inside the lens (I suppose it's the motion stabilizer lens which looses the power connection) and the screen blacks out after a 2 or 3 seconds, the it seems like the camera crashes at that point because when I press the preview button it boots.

EDIT: I have one more or less useful piece of information: it does log, but only the time, platform and version, so it get's as far as initiating the log file.

EDIT2: Almost forgot if I run it unmodified it gives me an error on line 12 of the sunset.lua lib, it looks like a bug to me as it's trying to use a variable that wasn't declared before. I tried to swap line 12 and 13 of the main script to get rid of this problem.

« Last Edit: 17 / February / 2018, 12:14:40 by SparkyCola »

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waterwingz

11887

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #3 on: 17 / February / 2018, 12:39:02 »

Quote from: SparkyCola on 17 / February / 2018, 12:07:24

So first, I copied all files (except propcase.lua, if I overwrite the original and much bigger one I get an error unsupported propset in line 16 of propset.lua when I try to run the script) that the script provides into the chdk folder.

Hmmm ... propcase.lua? There is no propcase.lua file included in the sunsetF16.zip file so I'm a bit confused right out of the gate. That file is core to the Lua system in CHDK - overwriting it with anything else can only cause problems.

That script is almost nine years old - a lot has happened in CHDK since then (mostly all backwards compatible FWIW). I looked at that script a few years ago and instantly walked away when I saw the code that deletes images if it thinks the SD card is getting full. No thank you.

Also, while it's fun to fixup old scripts and get them running, there is a much better script for sunsets that you might find a lot more interesting , reyalp's Raw_Meter_Intervalometer

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EDIT2: Almost forgot if I run it unmodified it gives me an error on line 12 of the sunset.lua lib, it looks like a bug to me as it's trying to use a variable that wasn't declared before. I tried to swap line 12 and 13 of the main script to get rid of this problem.

The line is :

Code: [Select]

set_prop(propcase.USER_AV,get_prop(propcase.MIN_AV))and if you borked up the propcase.lua file as suggested above, that's almost certainly why it threw an error. Those variables get initialized via propcase.lua

@reyalp : this is no longer g7x related - suggest moving the most recent posts to Night-time time-lapse - sunsetF16.lua ?

« Last Edit: 17 / February / 2018, 12:43:32 by waterwingz »

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

SparkyCola

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #4 on: 17 / February / 2018, 12:47:39 »

Quote from: waterwingz on 17 / February / 2018, 12:39:02

That script is almost nine years old - a lot has happened in CHDK since then (mostly all backwards compatible FWIW). I looked at that script a few years ago and instantly walked away when I saw the code that deletes images if it thinks the SD card is getting full. No thank you.

Also, while it's fun to fixup old scripts and get them running, there is a much better script for sunsets that you might find a lot more interesting , reyalp's Raw_Meter_Intervalometer

Thanks a lot, I saw today that it was pretty old, so thanks for your advice on old scripts. I understand the first issue with the old script now, and I suppose I could fix it, but the Raw_Meter_Intervalometer looks pretty much like what I'm looking for, I kinda like coding, but the actual photography is much more interesting and rewarding, and thankfully there's lot's of great code (thanks to great people like the CHDK and other (F)OSS and even proprietary developers) out there so I won't bother with this, at least not for now.

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waterwingz

11887

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #5 on: 17 / February / 2018, 12:58:18 »

Quote from: SparkyCola on 17 / February / 2018, 12:47:39

Thanks a lot, I saw today that it was pretty old, so thanks for your advice on old scripts. I understand the first issue with the old script now, and I suppose I could fix it, but the Raw_Meter_Intervalometer looks pretty much like what I'm looking for, I kinda like coding, but the actual photography is much more interesting and rewarding, and thankfully there's lot's of great code (thanks to great people like the CHDK and other (F)OSS and even proprietary developers) out there so I won't bother with this, at least not for now.

Another "less technical" option to reyalp's script is probably Yet Another Sunset Script (yass) v4.5. Should work right out of the box and requires less knowledge of the bowels of CHDK if you want to play with how it works. But it's not going to give you the results of reyalp's script.

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

SparkyCola

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #6 on: 17 / February / 2018, 13:03:22 »

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Should work right out of the box and requires less knowledge of the bowels of CHDK if you want to play with how it works. But it's not going to give you the results of reyalp's script.

It seems to have some more features like control over the ND filter, so it might be even better with high dynamics during the lapse. Anyway why would it not keep up with the results of reyalp's script? I can still enable RAW in the Canon settings, so that shouldn't be an issue.

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waterwingz

11887

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #7 on: 17 / February / 2018, 14:40:37 »

Quote from: SparkyCola on 17 / February / 2018, 13:03:22

Anyway why would it not keep up with the results of reyalp's script?

Fair question.

The simple answer is that reyalp's various RAW scripts take advantage of various hooks that CHDK sets deep in the Canon code to allow them to work with actual scene illumination rather than trying to manage the adjusted exposure settings picked by the Canon firmware for the output JPG images.

Dirty little CHDK secret? Most of the time Canon JPG quality is very hard to exceed with CHDK RAW/DNG. And when you can do so, it takes a lot of PP work.

With intervalometers, that changes. reyalp's scripts monitor actual scene illumination before the camera messes it up trying to get acceptable images. If you look at the results posted on the CHDK forum, the difference is obvious.

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

SparkyCola

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #8 on: 17 / February / 2018, 15:05:47 »

I see how this way of metering is much better

Quote from: waterwingz on 17 / February / 2018, 14:40:37

Dirty little CHDK secret? Most of the time Canon JPG quality is very hard to exceed with CHDK RAW/DNG. And when you can do so, it takes a lot of PP work.

I noticed that the JPGs look really good, I was not intending to use RAWs to enhance the quality of a single shot, but rather to adapt color and brightness of all images of a lapse in a smooth way PP to account for dynamics, to removing flickering and doing some toning and wb this way seems most reliable to me, as messing it up in situ may be bad if you catch a great scene, especially if you consider the recording time of a time lapse, and the extra storage is affordable, as I don't more than 1 or 2 minutes of processed footage for one shot, usually even only half a minute.

As for missing features, I suppose patching them in should be doable for me, but that's for another thread.

« Last Edit: 17 / February / 2018, 15:07:53 by SparkyCola »

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reyalp

11918

Re: Re: G7 X porting thread

« Reply #9 on: 17 / February / 2018, 15:27:13 »

Quote from: SparkyCola on 17 / February / 2018, 13:03:22

Anyway why would it not keep up with the results of reyalp's script?

Some advantages of rawopint are
* Speed: It can shoot at roughly the camera continuous rate
* Smooth exposure change
* Flexible control of over/under exposure

Some disadvantages:
* Too many confusing options
* No script control of aperture, it just uses whatever value you started with
* Not well suited for long intervals or rapidly changing lighting (edit to clarify: rawopint calculates exposure from the previous shot, so if there is a long time between shots, or lighting changes very quickly, results could be significantly worse than using values calculated immediately before the shot by canon autoexposure)

« Last Edit: 17 / February / 2018, 15:44:28 by reyalp »

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