It's true! For you, our blog readers, and for or a limited time, you can save 50% on ControlMyNikon and Cinematographer Pro with the coupon JAN2012. That's a great saving on the finest tethering software for your Nikon DSLR!

I hope you all had a great holiday season! Santa left behind an update to the popular Cinematographer Pro, now at version 3.1! This is a free upgrade for all our Cinematographer Pro users. Just use your Cinematographer Pro key on version 3.1 and you are good to go. Check out the release notes below:

• The main window now remembers it's previous position and size when starting up.
• The uninstaller now removes all registry entries for Cinematographer Pro.
• The white border on the main window on certain Vista computers no longer occurs.
• Updated the product code splash screen look and feel.

I just wanted to let you know that our new website will be coming online over the next couple of days and there may be occasional outages. The old blog contents will be moved to this new blog over the next couple of weeks.

Sure Nikon will sell you a remote for your DSLR. One problem with these remotes - they don't work when tethering in Live View! It turns out that you can use a standard and inexpensive Powerpoint remote to control many of the ControlMyNikon functions like triggering the shutter, starting a bracketing or timelapse sequence, even starting a script! Pretty well any type will work, so check the bottom of that laptop bag and give this amazing remote a try!



        And check out this tutorial video on how to set it all up.

Of course you can still watch those tutorials online via YouTube, but what happens when you need to watch a vid with no internet connection (as always seems to happen on location)? No problem, as the tutorial videos are now available for download on the Tutorials page, in all their HD glory!

ControlMyNikon is proud to introduce a totally new type of software package into the Nikon DSLR universe!

Cinematographer Pro is a dedicated video capture application for the D7000 and D5100 and features much of the functionality of field monitors used by videographers and cinematographers throughout the motion picture industry. Now you can use a windows tablet, netbook, laptop or desktop to easily compose, review focus and analyze exposure! You know we love Histograms, so be sure to check out the new bracketed histogram!


And you know that we also love making video tutorials, so check out the new Using Cinematographer Pro video tutorials over on the Tutorials page. In this 24 minute video, you will see all of the features of this unique app, including:

• Configurable aspect ratios. 2.39:1 anyone?
• Full live view histogram support with inner and outer brackets, giving you the functionality of a waveform monitor.
• Two Words. Video Peaking!
• Optional autofocus with zoom.
• Guides! Thirds, quads and adjustable margins.
• A separate window for focus pullers!

You may be wondering...Is this a Magic Lantern equivalent? The answer is no. Cinematographer Pro uses the official Nikon SDK and does not modify your camera firmware in any way. And, as usual, there is a free 14-day trial available and the also usual insanely low price of $9.95 USD. So give it a try, and see what a dedicated video recording app can do for you! 

The latest version of ControlMyNikon is now available for download here. This is a free upgrade for version 2.x users. Many thanks to all you who participated in the beta testing over the past month! Your feedback has made ControlMyNikon more capable and stable.

And we have 25 new tutorials videos that show exactly how to use ControlMyNikon. So check out the new tutorials over on the Tutorials page or check out what's new below.


New Features

• D5100 support.
• A new, simpler, faster, more reliable image browser.
• Configurable keyboard shortcuts.
• Powerpoint remote support.
• External triggers are now easier to use and configure.
• Easy white balance calibration.
• Intervalometer for time lapses.
• Bracketing for exposure and depth of field.
• Option to save to memory cards for certain camera models.
• Forward and reverse-tracking live view histograms.
• Video recording live histograms.
• Enhanced live view image review.
• Live view image export.
• Live view overlay.
• Four different live view aspect ratio croppings.
• Enhanced scripting.
• Comprehensive built-in help.

Bugs Fixed

• Live View minimizing and maximizing issues.
• Live view performance on slow computers.
• Live view image sometimes does not rotate.
• Theme glitches.
• Images are overwritten if they have the same file name.
• Script command status icons not updating quickly enough.
• Sound not working.
• Cannot load a profile when autoload is off.
• Setting D7000 tripod mode in live view is failing.
• Some D7000 and D3S cameras would not download the captured image.
• User gets a ''Unable to load Nikon Image Library'' error.



One thing I noticed on the Granville Island HDR shoot was all the little water taxis zipping about. I made a mental note to return and try a timelapse sequence of these boats. However, I had never even attempted a timelapse before, so I did a little research. Turns out the best place to pick up the tips and tricks of the trade are over at Timescapes Timelapse. Armed with this information, I was was ready to give it a try.

The goal for the timelapse video was to be around 1 minute in length in HD. A quick calculation indicated that I would need to capture 1200 images at 4 second intervals. This would take around 2.5 hours to capture, but hey it's a nice place to hang out. This length of time means that a DSLR video capture is out as it captures much shorter segments before maxing out.

For equipment, I brought along a Tripod, Nikon D40 with 18-200mm VR, laptop and ControlMyNikon. The D40 had been sitting on the shelf for awhile, a victim of my upgrading to a D300. What a perfect time to use it as the 3008 x 2000 resolution is more than enough for producing the video. Also, I liked the thought of working the shutter on the D40 as it seems quieter and less clunky than the D300.

You have some options in triggering your camera for a timelapse. Some higher-end Nikons have a built-in intervalometer. The tricky part of using it is that you can't really review your images on the LCD and check the histogram to ensure that the exposure is ok. If you leave the LCD on between shots, the battery will drain too quickly. There are also external triggers called intervalometer's starting around $50 USD. These work on cameras without a built-in intervalometer, but you still have the LCD/battery drain problem. However, if you have a laptop, you can remotely trigger and view the images as they come in on the laptop monitor. This way your camera batteries last a lot longer as the camera LCD never lights up after shots.

I found my location. This one had lots of people and boats flitting about so it should look good on a timelapse video. I set up the tripod as short and sturdy as it would go to minimize camera movement. Added the D40, set the focus to manual, turned VR off, set the lens as wide as it would go, connected it to the laptop via USB, then started ControlMyNikon. In it's simplest mode, you could use ControlMyNikon as a remote trigger and just keep on clicking the Capture button every several seconds but that would be a pain. I had visions of setting this all up and sitting nearby on a park bench so I could keep an eye on the rig while I listened to my iPod. Every now and then, I could wander over, check the captured images on the laptop for exposure/focus etc, then wander back to the comfortable bench. Simple and easy, that's me, so I used a very simple script to control the image captures. Here is the script:

Note: ControlMyNikon versions 3.0 and up now have a built-in intervalometer that allows easy timelapse capture. A script is no longer required.



I would be shooting in Aperture mode, but need to set this on the camera body manually as one cannot set this remotely on a D40. The Aperture vs Manual mode for time lapse sequences is a hotly contested issue in time lapse circles. Since this was a twilight sequence, I hoped that the little D40 could keep up with the exposure changes. I even equipped it with the viewfinder shield so that stray light entering the viewfinder would not mess up the exposure calculations. The script sets the image type to JPEG Fine, which is all we need for a time lapse. I set the repeats to 2000 knowing I could just stop the script at anytime when I have all the images I needed. Within the loop, there is a 2 second delay. There is approximately a 1.5 second delay to transfer the file from the camera to laptop, so the total delay is 3.5 seconds. That's a little faster than my 4 seconds originally planned, but I figured better too many images then too few.

To run the script, I simply clicked on the start button and watched the images roll in. I started up the iPod and relaxed while keeping an eye on the rig. Every now and then I would review the latest captured images on the built-in ControlMyNikon image browser and all was fine. Two and a half hour later, I figured I had enough images. A quick check of the batteries in the camera and laptop showed that I could have gone to about 3.5 hours if needed.

I used QuickTime Pro to import the images to create the video. The resulting video was sharp and well exposed, but I wanted it to be a bit more smooth. Enter Adobe After Effects CS4. The folks on the Timelapse forums had mentioned that there is a Time Warp effect in AE that allows you to interpolate frames, thus making 'in-between' images. I tried that and sure enough, it became a alot smoother than the QuickTime version. You'll sometimes see a bit of blurring or warping when one moving element crosses another moving element and this is a side effect of Time Warp. I've heard that tweaking the Time Warp properties or using other AE plugins can minimize this problem. The pan and zoom-out effect at the beginning of the video is also done using AE.

All in all, shooting timelapse is very relaxing. Just set up and sit back. I'm looking forward to the next one!