I’ve a Canon EOS 600D and have been searching for an intervalometer to start getting into photographing star trails. I’m not in a position to upgrade to a more modern camera, but understand that this should be good enough for a beginner. I’ve a Tamron 10-24mm lens as well, so fine for the required wide angles.
As an alternative to a cable-based system, I found that Magic Lantern offers a firmware upgrade that does the same job:
I presume I just download this to an SD card, pop that in the camera and… does it run automatically? Will I need to select something?
And most importantly - is it safe (won’t irreversibly damage the camera) and fit for purpose?
Any suggestions welcome. That includes recommendations for best editing software (on a Mac) to stitch images together, but getting the interval timer is the first step.
It’s like most wired ones, in that it’s kind of a pain to use in the dark, but eventually you get used to it and only have to turn a flashlight on every 3rd or 4th time.
For stacking star trails, I used to use StarStaX but lately I’ve just been doing them directly in Photoshop. Just open each image as a layer in the same document (this is easy to do if you also use Lightroom), and set each layer’s blend mode to “Lighten”.
When using external, wired shutter releases/intervalometers I like the Vello ones; this one doesn’t specifically mention your model but it is $100 less than what Turek listed; that’s worth a couple minutes of research to see if it’s compatible.
For software, I use Sequator on a PC (in case someone else reads this thread)
Thanks both - I did see both those wired intervalometers and wasn’t 100% sure of compatibility with my camera. It is about 12 years old, after all.
I’d seen some other good articles on using layers in Photoshop so if and when I get sorted on the hardware, I’ll likely go down that route.
And since opening the thread I discovered that Magic Lantern’s website has a forum which answers a lot of questions I had about installing and safety. My research continues but I’m inclined to set aside an afternoon to install it and test the result.