Basic set-up and Cable Release

 Outputs- Camera Setup

The first function available on the triggertrap Mobile is the “Cable Release”. It is the simplest function in the array of options and the best place to start off. And I will also cover some of the basic settings you can customise. Remember to use this set up you will need a smart phone with the app, a triggertrap dongle and the appropriate cable for your camera. But before you start to use the triggertrap you might want to set it up for your shooting style and camera.

Basic Settings and how it works

Triggertrap Mobile works by sending a special, hypersonic audio signal through the headphone socket of your smart phone. The Triggertrap Mobile Dongle receives the audio signal and “translates” it to something your camera can use.

If your phone isn’t set to English the app will automatically be set to the language of you phone. If you are using a non-English language on your phone and the app is in English then your language isn’t supported yet. The supported languages at the moment are…

•  US English
•  British English
•  German
•  Spanish
•  French
•  Italian
•  Japanese
•  Korean
•  Norwegian
•  Swedish
•  Simplified Chinese

And More languages are to come.If you clock on the small icon in the top right hand corner (the one that looks like 3 sliders) you will find the Camera Setup page (is should look something like the image at the top of the page). Through the set-up page you have several options. First off you can set you camera focus type and speed in the screen shot it is set to default but if you click on it you can chose fro several options that best fir your camera.

• Default *
• Canon Auto Focus *
• Canon Manual Focus ²
• Nikon Auto Focus *
• Nikon Manual Focus ²
  
• Universal Manual Focus ²
  
• Universal Fast Auto Focus *
  
• Universal Slow Auto Focus *

You basically have the possibility of choosing between a variate of auto or manual focus speeds based the camera manufacturer.

*Default and Auto focus settings are best used with non high-speed focus lenses as they allow a time interval for focusing. The time interval is dependant on which option you chose, slow being the longest and fast being the shortest.

² Triggertrap recommend using automatic triggering in manual focus mode. There are several reasons for this, including

• When you are doing automatic triggering, you’ll probably not be there to check whether your camera’s auto-focus is correct. That means you may come back to a memory card full of blurry photos, if it turns out that your auto-focus was struggling
•  To allow for the auto-focus to do its thing, we have to delay the shutter triggering. Obviously, this isn’t great if you are working with, say, a time trigger.

Shutter settings

If none of the preset shutter settings fit your needs you can create a custom shutter setting and rename it, or you can one of the presets and fine tune it. Click on the shutter setting it will be default be set to what you have loaded in your resets. You can adjust the sliders to match your needs. You can also click on the pencil at the top to rename your function from shutter to something that you find appropriate. If you go over to the preset tab you will see that you no have a custom setting extra in your list of option.

As far as I can tell the function and settings will only remain renamed until you chose a new preset then the shutter setting will revert your preset settings and the custom field is also gone from the pre-sets. So don’t worry about messing anything up experiment with your settings and find what right you you. in the worst case scenario chose a new preset and all your custom settings will be deleted.

I haven’t yet found a way to save these settings permanently to a new field in the presets but that might be a good suggestion for the team at Triggertrap. This also applies for the next tab Focus, you can adjust and rename it just like the shutter tab, but as soon as I have chosen a preset all my settings are gone. I guess that the idea here is to chose a set up and leave it. But if your like me and own lots of different equitpment or want to experiment it would be cool if these settings could be saved to a permanent profile in the presets tab.

You also limited control over the internal camera on your phone and Wi-Fi options but I want to cover them in more detail in another blog.

Cable Release

Once your This function is supported on both versions of the app (Android and iOS) and is design to replace the Cable Release you may already have from your camera manufacturer or 3rd party product. In the Cable Release mode, you can trigger your camera in 4 different ways. 1 for normal exposures and 3 different settings for long exposures.

• P: Program mode – Standard remote control function. Press the button and take a photo
• B: Bulb mode – Press and hold the shutter button on the Triggertrap to take a long exposure. When you release the Triggertrap shutter button, the exposure ends.*
• T: Time mode – Press the shutter button on the Triggertrap to take a long exposure. Press the shutter button again to end the exposure. Basically like Bulb but you don’t need to hold the button the whole exposure.*
• M: Manual mode – Use the slider to choose the length of your
  exposure. Press the shutter button on the Triggertrap.*

*To use B T and M mode your camera will need to be in Bulb mode.

NOTE: Some cameras (Olympus, Sony and Nikon, possibly others) require both the ‘shutter’ and ‘focus’ channels to be turned on. If ‘shutter’ is on, but ‘focus’ is off, the camera will not trigger.

Tips and Tricks

• The camera connection cable plugs into the 2.5mm socket on the
  Triggertrap Mobile Dongle, and into the camera’s wired remote control
  socket. But the dongel plugs into the 3.5mm audio jack port on your phone, so you and use a standard 3.5mm stereo headphones extension cable to have a much longer release cable.
• Watch your phones battery life, especially long exposures. And if you are doing very long exposure set your phone to Air-plane or Mailbox mode so it wont ring in the middle of an exposure.