Getting Ready for Summer Star Party

I reassembled the wiring harnesses for my equipment along more functional lines. I had put things together by type of connection which was pretty silly in hindsight. So now I have two four-cable harnesses for each Canon 350D (one DC power line, one serial line for the shutter release, one USB connection, and one heater strip for the lens). They’re bundled with twist ties every 6-8 inches.

I also dug out a Y-adapter for the shutter release. That lets me control both shutters with one DSUSB release. Unfortunately, as I posted here a long time ago, Canon’s software can’t handle more than one camera at a time. But you can "cheat" by only connecting one up via the USB connector and splitting the shutter release cable. So long as you don’t want to do anything fancy (e.g., change ISO settings), this works. Of course, you also need to have lenses with similar properties which mostly means f-stop, or else you have to set things up so they same exposure is sensible for both.

Anyway, it is all wired up and seems to work fine. There are a few "interesting" behaviors with this arrangement. When the shutter release cable is connected via the Y-adapter, turning on/off one camera causes the other one’s shutter to fire (it it is on, duh). If I turn then both on simultaneously, this doesn’t happen. Since I have mirror lock turned on on both, it’s important to watch for that to avoid having them out-of-sync.

I also discovered that ImagesPlus 2.75 has no means to not download the images and leave them on the camera. That’s annoying since I would rather leave both sets on the camera. I could upgrade and see if that helps, but the upgrade to the latest version is $120. I’m trying to avoid the expense right now and it would never arrive in time for the Summer Star Party anyway. MaxDSLR has the same problem. DSLRFocus 3.3.15 (beta, never made it out of beta) will leave the images on the camera and it works well enough even if it has been orphaned by its author.

I need to do a few test flats and darks. Well, I can just accept a 50% duty cycle and have the camera do its own dark frame subtraction, but I still need to do some test flats.

But first priority is to get my 7-year old’s new bicycle built tomorrow. We bought a 7-speed online, "some assembly required," and he’s ready for it.