Synchronising of two cameras

Started by tho.mueller1, June 18, 2016, 03:37:20 PM

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tho.mueller1

Dear experts,

Since quite some years I own a setup for 3D photos consisting of two Lumix TZ10 cameras connected by Co van Ekeren [1]. As you imagine, the image quality is not comparable with the one of the Canon EOS 5D mark III, which I therefore prefer to use in the last time. Because of this I am thinking of a way to synchronise two EOS cameras and mounting them on a beam splitter rig. I know of multiple ways to roughly synchronise the trigger but I am looking for something more advanced, like a system that reads out the complete settings of one camera and sets them to the second camera. This should at least contain the most important settings like exposure, aperture and ISO, but also for example the focus would be really interesting to have. The ideal case is, that only one camera would have to be handled and the second camera just behaves the same way.

At half-pressed shutter after focussing is done, the relevant/all camera settings of the first camera have to be read out. Then these settings should be transferred to the other camera and be applied there. After this is done and the shutter of the first camera is fully pressed, a photo should be taken with each camera. I could imagine, that the transfer of the settings can either be done by the first camera directly connected to the second one via USB, or one could connect both cameras to a smartphone, where half-pressing the shutter of the first camera would trigger the sychronisation of the second camera, which is then steered by the program running on the smartphone.

Now I would like to ask, whether you think that this is at all possible and what parts are already there (in Magic Lantern). I saw some developments by Zsolt Sz. Sztupák [2-4], but all of this seems to be quite old and it is not so clear to me, whether this is still followed up or supported. Also I think a better way would be to aim for something that could potentially be integrated into Magic Lantern. I think a good starting point for me would be to write a module for Magic Lantern which reads the settings from the camera after focussing and writes them out (either to a file or to the screen) and then read in these settings again, apply them and shoot another picture. I have the impression, that this should be fairly easy. The next step would be then to think about the connection of two cameras and the trnasfer of data, where I am up to now not very experienced. Does this sound reasonable/doable to you? Thank you very much for your feedback.


[1] http://www.world-of-3d.com/3d-igital-equipment/ekeren-3d-equipment/index.html
[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ml-devel/Sw0B1kpFlIU
[3] http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9570.0
[4] https://github.com/sztupy/mlcontroller

Regards,
Thomas Müller