Papywizard Tips and Tricks

• Global usage
• Delays
• Bracketing and mirror lock-up
• Shooting direction
• Home position

Global usage

TODO

Delays

There are two delays to set in the configuration dialog: Stabilization delay and Time value.

The first one is the delay between the end of the move end the effective shooting. Depending of the tripod used, the head can start shaking while moving. So, it maye need a long delay before it stabilizes again. This is especially true if the head is on a long pole.

The second delay mainly depends of the exposure time of the camera; it should be longer that this time. Take into account the total time of the shooting cycle, which is longer that the exposure time alone. Note that the shutter trigger remains on during all the Time value; if the camera AF mode is on, use a much longer delay to let it complete its AF cycle.

Bracketing and mirror lock-up

Panoramic shooting often needs to use bracketing, especially for full-spherical panos. Papywizard supports this feature: just enter how many pictures your want to take at each position with the Number of pictures config. parameter.

If you want to lock-up the mirror before shooting, you can also use this parameter. Set it to 2 if you want only 1 shot, or 6 if you want to braket on 3 exposures with mirror lock-up at each shot.

Shooting direction

The default Papywizard scanning scheme is to shoot row by row, reveting the direction at each row (to avoid too much moves). But it is possible to configure it so it shoots column by column, and ask it to always ask it shooting from the begining of the row/column.

The best configuration mainly depends of the subject you are shooting. For example, if you have fast moving clouds, it is best to let the default configuration, to shoot the entire sky as fast as possible. But it also depends of the orientation of the head; if it is mounted on an horizontal pole, then choose column as first shooting direction.

Home position

When the Merlin/Orion head is turned on, its internal electronic sets the position of both axis to zero. Be aware that in preset mode, the pitch axis positions assume that the zero is the position where the camera is horizontal; if it is not the case, zenith/nadir won't be real zenith/nadir.

In order to set a correct zero, you should first put the yaw axis so the camera is horizontal, using a bubble level in the flash connector, and then press the Home button, to tell Papywizard to use that position as origin.