Sony Alpha live view support for the Timelapse+ VIEW Intervalometer
The following is a guest post from Isaac:
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Timelapse+ had a really interesting KickStarter last year for their VIEW Intervalometer and it looks like they now have live-view support for the Alpha!
The VIEW is a powerful little device with some neat features like automatic bulb ramping, live time lapse preview — watched either on the VIEW or a smartphone — and touch-free gesture controls.
Since the end of the KickStarter campaign, Timelapse+ has been actively adding new features and working with other vendors to include third-party integrations to the VIEW.
Timelapse+ creator, Elijah Parker posted on the company’s blog:
Anyway, back to the good news — live view is working! This is nice because you can stream live view over the app and more conveniently setup motion keyframes or just setup the shot from somewhere else altogether via app.view.tl over the internet.
I had previously believed live view wasn’t possible over USB with Sony since there didn’t seem to be any hidden commands in the protocol for this and Sony’s software doesn’t support it. Sony’s USB protocol is quite limited and in my opinion, terribly designed. For example, to change ISO, you can only tell it to go up or down, then read what it is. To find the range of options, you need to move it up until it doesn’t change anymore, then run it all the way down, one step at a time, until it again stops changing. Compare this with Nikon, where you can request the list of valid ISOs, choose one, then set it to be anything. No stepping blindly through a list. Canon is slightly more cumbersome — the lists of everything are sent all at once when it first connects, then again if they change. They can’t just be requested at anytime, but it still works just fine.
This is just a blurb from his post but you should read the whole blog post. It’s fairly technical but interesting.
You can read more about VIEW on the company’s website: timelapseplus.com/view
