Promote Control for HDR?

MileHighAko

I've searched for a thread about this tool and can't find one.

I'm looking for any experience with the Promote Control device from Promote Systems.

http://www.promotesystems.com/products/Promote-Control.html

I'd like the idea of being able to bracket more than 3 frames without touching my camera (D7000), but not sure it's worth the $$.

Anyone have experience that they can share?

kdog

Interesting device. I hadn't seen this before, so I took a look at it and watched both videos. Here are my thoughts.

The device seems to be predicated on the notion that it's better to take higher numbers of frames at smaller EV steps, as opposed to fewer shots at higher EV steps. In their examples, they're showing a dozen or more frames at 1/3rd EV steps. Maybe I haven't kept up with the technology, but I've never seen a case why this would be more beneficial than taking a third that number of shots at 1 EV stepping. HDR software does blending of the different exposures, so at some point there are diminishing returns to having such small exposure increments between frames. Plus, large number of frames are detrimental as it takes that much more time to acquire them. The most common case of very high-range scenes are sunsets and sunrises. And in those cases, the light is changing extremely rapidly. Speed of acquisition is very important in capturing these scenes. Ditto with cloud motion or motion of any other objects in the scene. The longer it takes to acquire the scene, the greater the ghosting you need to deal with.

The other thing I noticed is that this device kills your ability to use burst bracketing. That's where you put your camera in AEB and fire off a burst of shots which automatically stops at the end of the sequence. That's the fastest way to bracket for HDR. Of course you only get a limited number of frames this way that the camera supports, and so that limits the range you can capture. But, one become adept at firing off a burst, spinning the EC wheel a certain number of clicks, and then firing off a second burst. Even though that requires touching your camera once between bursts, it still appears to be significantly quicker than what the Promote control can do using single-shot mode. Again, in changing light conditions or where there is any motion in the scene, speed of acquisition is your friend here.

So for me, I'm not convinced of the utility of this tool. It seems like a gadget predicated on a need that doesn't really exist.

-joel

Art Scott

I do not understand the "not wanting to touch my camera" during exposures for HDR.....I have shot many thousand frames of film that were bracketed and had to touch my camera between each exposure to change shutter speed....I found no problems of combining the frames (using a glass slide frame) for images with more contrast.....all I needed to do was LOCK my camera on a tripod so it could not wiggle and all was good.....now with my current cams...I do as Kdog suggest set for a 9 shot burst and fire a remote trigger and I am done.......I have shot several on a Konica Minolta A2 that I had to manually change my shutter speed, but then again I was locked solidly onto a tripod.....

Good Luck.....

kdog

Art Scott wrote: »

I do not understand the "not wanting to touch my camera" during exposures for HDR

Right. With auto-aligning features in both the HDR tools and Photoshop, any fear of causing a slight misalignment is really unfounded. I even hand-hold my bracketing and the auto-align still deals with it. A skew of a few pixels here and there is no problem at all.

MileHighAko

Thanks for the feedback. I'm obviously new to HDR, so you've helped me a bit.

What I'd really like to be able to do is time lapse HDR - but this device doesn't support it, and the time lapse feature of my camera doesn't seem to work with bracketing.

eoren1

There's a guy here in Boston who does some great HDR stuff. I did a photowalk with him over the summer and he was using the Promote. He's a big fan of it and has a review on his site:
http://brianmatiash.com/blog/2010/03/04/gear-review-the-promote-control-a-canon-hdr-photographers-story/
Personally, I shoot with a Canon 50D and set the Function button as AEB. I dial in a +/-1 EV and then use live view to focus and get rid of mirror slap. Then shoot a -2, -1, 0 series and turn the wheel to get a +1,+2,+3 series. 6 brackets with minimal touching of the bracket.
Hope that helps
E

MileHighAko

Thanks E. I'll check out the link.

Shows how much I don't know about my camera. I was just able to figure out how to do auto-bracketing (3 exposure) in timed interval mode. Pretty cool stuff as I'd like to do some weather HDR time lapse shots.

So far the one shortcoming (not sure how big of a deal it is yet) is that in mirror up mode, the mirror is lowered prior to each new exposure. I'll have to play with it some more and see if I can lock it somehow - would love to put the mirror up and take a 3xbracket every few seconds for 5 minutes to capture a really cool time lapse of the clouds.

eoren1

If you're looking at bracketed, interval shots, a promote may be in your future - that's way beyond what my Canon can do...

MileHighAko

Well, I spent much of the afternoon testing and discovered that I can pretty much do everything I want without an external tool. Good news is that the D7000 works like a champ doing bracketed interval shooting. Its limited to three shot brackets, but that turns out to be plenty. Setting up the camera on a 60 minute interval to take a 3xbracket every 5 seconds, it just hums away and does its job. The PP is by far the hard part.

Since the D7000 does not have a separate (from the USB) cable release port, the Promote Control doesn't seem to be all that useful at this point. I like the idea of the tool, maybe a future version, who knows.

SteveF

Hi,

I have one and used it with a 5d2.

To me it does all the things that should be in the camera's firmware.

Of course it isn't "necessary" but if you do a lot of HDR it sure makes them easy. I'd give it two solid thumbs up.

That being said I've been using another system for landscapes for a while now and so it has been mostly just sitting in the closet.