Did my first flight on my new P4A today. Did a bunch of samples. The stills were far beyond my expectations. Any issues with using the drone to do timelapses while not flying? I know the shutter is mechanical and am wondering what the life on it is. Don't want to burn up a shutter real fast.

I use magic lantern and a 7D to do most of my timelapses with out using a shutter. But you know how it goes... You get on location with one camera and find multiple scenes you want to lapse. Being able to strap the drone to a flat tripod mount and time lapse would be cool.

And yes im going to do flying timelapses also...

Thanks
B

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll forward to the engineers for consideration.

Why don't you just test it, i think you'll find it working just fine. Both videos and photos can be taken while the aircraft is placed on ground having the motors powered off so i think there would be no problem with the time lapse function.
The Pano feature on the other hand might have some issues when not airborne.

Lol... I tested that the first flight by taking video and stills on the ground. The issue is with the mechanical shutter. Most DSLR's are good for 100k-300k shutter clicks. A 2 second interval results in 30 images a minute. 1800 an hour. Thats only 55.5 one hour sessions before shutter replacement. Its not unusual to have 2-3 hour runs when trying to capture footage. At 2 hour runs the camera shutter lasts 28 sessions. Not long. I could burn a shutter in a summer of shooting monsoon storms here in Arizona.

The shutter on the P4A camera is not the same as a DSLR I assume. Shutter life is the unknown factor on this camera. I don't want to have to replace it after short term use.

The P4A camera makes my gopro black look like junk. The black has been a kind of backup timelapse camera. It just require so much more post processing and the IQ is poor at times.

For panos I use software ( Ptgui ).

Anyways... Trying to get an idea about shutter life.

Answering my own question... Been looking through the settings and it looks like you can turn the mechanical shutter off. So turn it off for landscape timelapses. Issue Solved.

Another thing you want to test is if the gimbal can sit perfectly still while the AC is on the ground. There was a report from a user trying the same on an Inspire 2, and the gimbal was jumpy enough (while on the ground) to have ruined the time lapse.

Thanks Rent...

BfromAZ Posted at 2018-5-25 07:49
Lol... I tested that the first flight by taking video and stills on the ground. The issue is with the mechanical shutter. Most DSLR's are good for 100k-300k shutter clicks. A 2 second interval results in 30 images a minute. 1800 an hour. Thats only 55.5 one hour sessions before shutter replacement. Its not unusual to have 2-3 hour runs when trying to capture footage. At 2 hour runs the camera shutter lasts 28 sessions. Not long. I could burn a shutter in a summer of shooting monsoon storms here in Arizona.

The shutter on the P4A camera is not the same as a DSLR I assume. Shutter life is the unknown factor on this camera. I don't want to have to replace it after short term use.

If you're worried of the shutter Q, better get it used as much as possible while under warranty, i would think what makes the largest risk with this use would be lack of ventilation through the aircraft.

KedDK Posted at 2018-5-26 21:36
If you're worried of the shutter Q, better get it used as much as possible while under warranty, i would think what makes the largest risk with this use would be lack of ventilation through the aircraft.

I don't think heat is going to be as big of an issue as you may believe.

Camera - Camera stays very cool with stills at 2-3 second intervals. Its not like running 4k vid where it generates a bunch of heat. Gimbal is not getting a bunch of action due to lack of movement.

Battery - Stays cooler due to minimal amp draw. Esc's are not running ( big source of heat ). That leaves the VTX. So vtx heat is the only main heat source.

I tested yesterday here in the Arizona heat. Did a 45 minute backyard test timelapse. Camera was cool. Gimbal was cool. Battery was warm. Quad body was cool. Winds were in the 30's. Quad did get some sun.

There was a bit of gimbal movement. Post stabilization was effective after the fact. If its doable in 30mph winds its doable in calmer conditions.

Soon as we get some nice sky conditions will do a real test...

B

BfromAZ Posted at 2018-5-27 08:54
I don't think heat is going to be as big of an issue as you may believe.

Camera - Camera stays very cool with stills at 2-3 second intervals. Its not like running 4k vid where it generates a bunch of heat. Gimbal is not getting a bunch of action due to lack of movement.

You might as well be right, and i hope you'll see no issues, i just have my concerns as we see more and more reports of failures on both controllers and aircraft after just a firmware upgrade. I see more and more pointing to the soldering work on those items is very bad and just the heat during said upgrades can make the components to loose their connections on the boards.

I do wish you manage to get the desired results without any Ooops.

btw. i tested the pano myself and it was clever enough to throw out an error before taking even the first photo when not airborne. Said something like "failed to take picture, please take off and try again".

KedDK Posted at 2018-5-27 09:11
You might as well be right, and i hope you'll see no issues, i just have my concerns as we see more and more reports of failures on both controllers and aircraft after just a firmware upgrade. I see more and more pointing to the soldering work on those items is very bad and just the heat during said upgrades can make the components to loose their connections on the boards.

I do wish you manage to get the desired results without any Ooops.

Here is my backyard footage from yesterday. Done in 30mph winds. In calm winds this should be easily doable. Normally I don't use Warp for stabalization and prefer mercalli. In this case though warp worked very well. You can see the gimbal being blown around in the original as was already noted to be the case when someone tried to do it with an Inspire 2.

Some good post processing, stabilization and anti flicker should work well. Same process for doing it in flight...



B