Effectiveness of Mirror Lock-Up (MLU)

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Originally Posted by Alis

Colin, I have to tell you that thing is the most confusing piece of electronics I have ever bought, it has the same number of indicators/buttons as a meat thermometer and comes with a piece of paper (manual) that has zero information in it (in 50 different languages)...:mad:

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As bad as a Doctor's hand-writing eh?

Basically, it's just an electronic switch ...

1st mode is a 1-off that tells it how long to wait until it bursts into life (eg if it's 11pm and you want to capture a 5am sunrise you can tell it to wait 6 hours before doing anything)

2nd mode tells it how long to activate the switch for (if the camera is in bulb mode this becomes your shutterspeed) (in seconds), but if the camera is in eg Av mode just set it to 1 second (with drive set to single) to take a shot.

3rd mode tells it how long to wait until taking the next shot (so if you want to take a shot every minute - and mode 2 is set to 1 second, you need to set mode 3 to 59 seconds)

4th mode just tells it how many times to go through modes 2 & 3 (goes forever if set to 00)

So you could tell it to wait 4 hours 14 minutes and 17 seconds and then take 73 exposures 2 minutes and 18 seconds each, with 1 hour 19 minutes and 53 seconds between them. Pretty powerful eh?

There are a couple of "Gotchas" though -

1. Sometimes you have to remember to give the camera time to do things, like noise reduction

2. If the camera seems unresponsive it's probably because the unit is still trying to hold the shutter release down (press stop on the TC-80N3) (same goes for sliding the manual button to the locked on position).

Hope this helps!

PS: To change settings, just push the thumb wheel in.

Thanks, Colin. This is very helpful! Let me concentrate for a minute here :)

Mirror lock up is essential when ever I'm shooting through my Orion 1250mm f/13.9 ( 90mm Ø ) Maksutov Cassegrain. On my SD14, the angle of view turns out to be just 0.95° x 0.63°.

I've learned the hard way that any vibration within the camera/scope, tripod, or even a floor that the tripod is standing on can through off and blur an image, especially if the exposure is fairly long, > 1 second.

I have a balcony that I've use to set everything up for astronomical photography and just my shifting position during an exposure is too much vibration.

Along with mirror lock up, waiting several seconds between moving the mirror and taking the exposure, and triggering the camera from 15 for more feet away is what it takes.

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

Basically, it's just an electronic switch ...

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One more question: does this thing have an On-Off switch?!

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Originally Posted by Alis

One more question: does this thing have a On-Off switch?!

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Yes it does ;)

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Originally Posted by Alis

One more question: does this thing have an On-Off switch?!

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No. Not sure what Kent is thinking of:eek:

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Originally Posted by KentDub

Yes it does ;)

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Really? I can't find it. I am sure it does not have an auto-off function, since everytime I look at mine, it is on :eek:

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

No. Not sure what Kent is thinking of:eek:

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Ya, I pressed every possible combination of buttons but the only thing I get is hold!

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

Not sure what Kent is thinking of:eek:

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I don't even know what I'm thinking of. My camera has a MLU option (Enable/Disable = On/Off)..... Alis what camera are you using?

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Originally Posted by Alis

Ya, I pressed every possible combination of buttons but the only thing I get is hold!

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Just don't forget to press stop when you've finished - I was carrying the camera on a tripod through a forrest a while back and couldn't figure out why it kept firing all by itself! Doh!

I've been taking snaps of orchids with my 5d mk ii and a macro lens. The images were not sharp at any point in the field of focus and I'm sure this was because I neglected to lock up the mirror. Now I have to go back and take the photos all over again.

Hugh

My Canon 7D as well as the 40D each has three User Selected Settings which you can access via the mode dial (C-1, C-2, C-3). I have my C-1 set up for action shooting and C-2 set up for mirror lock up and C-3 set up for AEB which allows me to shoot HDR imagery.

I consider the user selected modes as a wonderful capability allowing me to set all the parameters required for the above type of shooting with a single twist of the mode dial instead of setting the parameters individually.

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Originally Posted by KentDub

I use it every time I have the camera on a tripod. If you go through the trouble of setting it all up to stableize the camera - why not go all the way?

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Same for me except than it's just a timer in my bridge camera. There is no mirror to lock up but the shake of pressing the shutter button is still there.