Gethin Hill .net - Random Ramblings

Well i’ve decided to do a quick write-up for one of the new toys for my camera i recently bought. It’s the Phottix dSLR Timer Remote.

This remote control allows you to do time-lapse photography, and also allows you easier and more precise control with long exposures (bulb).  It also functions as a basic remote if you want to keep your hands off the camera while shooting from a tripod.

There is an official Canon Timer Remote, the TC-80N3, however it costs a lot more and the input plug would need to be modified to fit with my EOS 400d/Rebel XTi,  so i decided to try this 3rd party one out. I scored it from Ebay for about $55AU including postage. I’m pretty sure there are versions available for other non-Canon users too.

My initial impressions out of the box were that it was quite large, larger than i expected (see photo with it in hand further in post), however this really doesn’t bother me as it’s a comfortable size to hold, and not easy to lose.  It’s made out of plastic but seems to be quite well built and solid, but not overly heavy, even with batteries inside. Also, it wasn’t long before i realised there’s no way to turn off the device! A strange feature exclusion i thought, but ah well, not a major hassle by any means.

But enough about how it looks, how does it work and how does it perform i hear you asking..  Well keep reading..

The remote is powered by 2 x standard AAA batteries and claims that these will last for 60 days of continuous shooting. I’m not sure how ‘continuous’ that would be (do they mean something like 1 shot every second for 60 days or maybe 1 shot every day for 60 days?), but generally, i imagine the limit’s would depend on your camera battery life and photo memory space as much as remote battery life.

The batteries are easy to insert/remove, so as mentioned before, the hassle of no power button is really not that big of a deal. Once batteries are inserted, the device automatically powers up, ready for use.

There’s really not much to the remote to get too confused over. It basically consists of a few simple buttons that all serve basic purposes and an LCD screen with a navigation menu across the top. It’s pretty easy to figure out.

There is a LIGHT/LOCK button. This button serves 2 purposes. Pressing this will turn on the backlight for the LCD so you can see in dark situations.  The light automatically turns itself off.  Holding the LIGHT/LOCK button will lock the remote so that accidental button presses won’t effect it.  Holding the button down again will unlock the remote.

In the middle of the remote is a directional button with up, down, left, right and a SET button in the centre.  This is used to change and set the various settings or the timer remote.  I’ll get onto what the settings are and what they do in a bit more detail further on.

Next to settings button, you have the TIMER START/STOP button. Again, pretty self-explanatory. Pressing it starts the camera to take photographs according to the settings you have set.  Pressing it again stops it.

Last but not least, you have the remote SHUTTER button and Hold feature.  This acts the same as the shutter button on your camera. Half press to focus, full press to take the shot.  The Hold feature is used for BULB exposures. You can press the shutter down and then put it on hold so you don’t need to keep your finger on the button. Take it off hold when you want to finish the shot, or take over with your finger again. A nice feature to have, although, if you know how long you want the shutter open for, i’d just use the timer.. after all, that’s what it’s made for!  Another nice bonus of the shutter button is that you can take a shot even while during a time-lapse session. Say, for instance, that you were photographing a plant growing and you notice a bee has landed on it, but the next photo isn’t due for another 15 minutes, well, just press the shutter button and take one in between.. your time-lapse session will continue as per normal.

To use the remote, there’s a couple of things to remember. If you want to use the remote with the remote determining the length of the shot, then you must set your camera to BULB mode. This can usually be found by putting your camera on MANUAL settings, and changing the shutter speed to slower than 30 seconds. You can ignore this if you plan to use the cameras settings to control the shutter speed, use SHUTTER PRIORITY or MANUAL instead.

Ok, now onto the settings. There are various settings you can set including the delay before each shot is taken, the duration (shutter speed) of each shot, the interval between each shot and how many shots to take.

To set the settings, you use the sideways buttons to navigate through the different settings, and the up and down buttons to change the settings.  Pretty straight forward?

The first setting is DELAY. It’s for setting the delay before the time-lapse session is taken. I’m not exactly sure of when this setting comes in handy. I guess it’s if you want to start the time-lapse session going in 2 hours and 48 minutes and 15 seconds time, rather than straight away, then this is how you can do that.  I usually just leave it on 00:00:00 so it starts straight away.

Second setting across is LONG. This is for how long the shutter stays open for each shot. Unfortunately, the lowest time is 1 second, however, if you want each shot to be at a faster speed than 1 second, you can use the in-camera shot settings on Manual or Shutter Priority modes. I imagine Aperture Priority works too, however i haven’t tested this out yet. Very handy for long exposures of a specific length, even just single shots, not part of a time-lapse.

Next along is INTERVAL. This is the time between each shot. One thing to remember about this is that it includes the LONG setting, so you need to keep this in mind when setting it. Example. Say i’d set my LONG at 5 seconds, and i wanted shots taken every 20 seconds, then i’d set my INTERVAL at 20 seconds, not 15 seconds like I originally thought. It’s the entire interval, not just the gap inbetween shots.

Next you have N which i assume stands for number. This is the amount of shots you want to take at the previous settings. For some reason, it will do between 1-399 shots or infinity.  Not sure why you can’t choose up to 999. Again, not too much of a hassle really, and if you really need a specific amount of shots, then some simple maths should figure out how long to shoot for at whatever settings.

Last and well, least, is the SOUND setting.. Basically you can have the remote beep to let you know when it’s going to take a pic, or not.  And that’s basically it to the settings.

Setting the settings is easy, setting the right settings for the situation, now that’s a different story altogether, and one that will have to wait till later, when i figure it out

I haven’t had much of a chance to test it out too much yet, but i’ve given it a quick go and it works great so far, performing as it’s supposed to with no problems whatsoever.

So to wrap up this write up, here’s a couple of test-run time-lapse vids taken with my Canon EOS400d/Rebel XTi and shiny new Phottix Timer Remote.

The Brisbane River getting dark .. about 30 frames, each being 2 seconds long and 20 seconds apart, played back at 8 fps.

Cassy, the Aussie Tarantula (Phlogius crassipes) .. about 90 frames, 2 seconds apart played back at 6fps.

So what do i think of the Phottix Timer Remote overall?? I think it’s great, and i don’t see any need to spend more on the official Canon Timer Remote TC-80N3.  Save the money for those other camera items where you actually do get what you pay for.

If you know of any of the difference between the official Canon remote and the Phottix version, please let us know in the comments!  Same goes for if you’ve had experience with this remote or another version, good or bad.  Thanks for reading!

Gethin

Tags: Equipment, Photography, phottix, remote, review, time-lapse, timer

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Photography, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.