Has anyone used the ioShutter app and cable for iphone with a canon? and have you had any issues with it?
I've had this for some months now and it is forever frustrating me... just when i think i have it sorted out, it stops working...
last night i experimented for ages and finally got it to work with the bulb setting on my canon T2i... took it out this morning for some ultra long exposures and could not get it to work...
not sure if i am doing something wrong or if the app is glitchy or what...
You've probably thought of this already, but was the camera able to focus, or in manual focus mode? If the camera is in 'One-shot' AF mode and can't achieve focus lock (as might be the case if it's dark enough for an ultra-long exposure) then it won't start the exposure.
@abirkill yes - that part i know i had right... focussed before putting on the filter and then locked in manual... the shutter would actually open when i activated ioshutter, but wouldn't stay open for the 3 minutes i'd set (or any time i'd set)... really hard to explain, but i'm pretty sure i was doing exactly what i did last night when i was trying it out (when i did a 10 minute exposure)... tx tho
@northy No worries, I figured you'd probably have thought of that!
I see the cable seems to be triggered by an audio signal from the phone -- I had something that did that years ago (not for controlling a camera) and it was hideously unreliable. I seem to remember you had to make sure the 'volume' on the phone was set just right -- it needs to be loud enough for the device to hear it, but not so loud that it misinterprets it!
I might guess it also would be confused if you received a text message or other notification that causes the phone to make a noise!
Is there any light or other signal on the cable linking the phone to the camera indicating whether it thinks the shutter should be open or not? Was it only triggering the shutter for less than a second -- that would indicate it didn't expect the camera to be in bulb mode, and was just sending a single pulse to tell the camera to start a fixed-length exposure. If it takes a photo that lasts several seconds, but less time than you set on the app, that would suggest a problem with cable misinterpreting what the phone is telling it to do...
@abirkill tx Alexis... i did not receive any text messages at the time, but it's a phone so there would be the general cell signal and possibly that confused things? last night when i finally figured out what settings i needed to make this work i just so happened to be in a "dead" zone in our house! maybe i'll experiment next time with putting it in airplane mode... and maybe i'll see if my wireless remote triggers the bulb (i couldn't get it to work last time i tried that either, but in retrospect, i was using the wrong camera setting)... i'll figure it out eventually :)
i'm james, the inventor of ioShutter. i'm sorry to hear you're finding your ioShutter cable unreliable... it should be perfectly reliable!
here are some tips:
- shoot in manual focus with anything like this (thanks alexis)
- volume on max at all times*
- although cell signals don't affect ioShutterSLR, for really long bulb and timelapses, i'd suggest you engage 'flight mode' if you're running it on your iPhone.
- if you still have issues, run through this list, which covers all the things that can make any app stop responding;
* alexis makes some excellent points. thanks to the way we designed it the volume with ioShutterSLR doesn't have to be 'just right', it just has be anywhere from mid to maximum. the app reminds you of that, but a lot of people switch off the reminders once they're used to it and then it's easy to forget to make sure the volume is up. volume issues are a really common issue with the cheaper iPhone release systems that appeared after ioShutter, but with ioShutter, as long as you've got the volume up, it should be 100% reliable.
hope this helps... now i'm going to dive into 365project and no doubt waste some office-time browsing photos!
if you need any more help, ping me here, on FB, twitter or on our contact page.
@jammad tx so much James! I checked out the suggestions on the website... i'd forgotten about needing to shut down all the apps from the iphone every once in a while and haven't done this in ages, so i will do that and then try ioShutter again... really appreciate you jumping in to help and i hope you didn't get into too much trouble looking at all the amazing pictures here on 365 :)
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I see the cable seems to be triggered by an audio signal from the phone -- I had something that did that years ago (not for controlling a camera) and it was hideously unreliable. I seem to remember you had to make sure the 'volume' on the phone was set just right -- it needs to be loud enough for the device to hear it, but not so loud that it misinterprets it!
I might guess it also would be confused if you received a text message or other notification that causes the phone to make a noise!
Is there any light or other signal on the cable linking the phone to the camera indicating whether it thinks the shutter should be open or not? Was it only triggering the shutter for less than a second -- that would indicate it didn't expect the camera to be in bulb mode, and was just sending a single pulse to tell the camera to start a fixed-length exposure. If it takes a photo that lasts several seconds, but less time than you set on the app, that would suggest a problem with cable misinterpreting what the phone is telling it to do...
i'm james, the inventor of ioShutter. i'm sorry to hear you're finding your ioShutter cable unreliable... it should be perfectly reliable!
here are some tips:
- shoot in manual focus with anything like this (thanks alexis)
- volume on max at all times*
- although cell signals don't affect ioShutterSLR, for really long bulb and timelapses, i'd suggest you engage 'flight mode' if you're running it on your iPhone.
- if you still have issues, run through this list, which covers all the things that can make any app stop responding;
enlightphotoproDOTcom/troubleshooting-ioshutter-slr/
* alexis makes some excellent points. thanks to the way we designed it the volume with ioShutterSLR doesn't have to be 'just right', it just has be anywhere from mid to maximum. the app reminds you of that, but a lot of people switch off the reminders once they're used to it and then it's easy to forget to make sure the volume is up. volume issues are a really common issue with the cheaper iPhone release systems that appeared after ioShutter, but with ioShutter, as long as you've got the volume up, it should be 100% reliable.
hope this helps... now i'm going to dive into 365project and no doubt waste some office-time browsing photos!
if you need any more help, ping me here, on FB, twitter or on our contact page.
cheers!