Tutorials

In today's video we are going to talk about some preset settings you should pay attention to if you need to bracket your photos.
We would like this video to be useful to both MECHA C1 and MECHA C2 users, so we will create a preset using MECHA's User Interface.
Access the User Interface using your computer or smartphone.
Let us say you use a fisheye lens and you need six photos for a spherical panorama, plus one zenith and one nadir photo, and now you would like three photos to be taken for each position, instead of one.
To create a preset for this case, we suggest to select the preset "FE 16mm NZ Level" from the Presets list, then load it with the Load button. It can be used almost as is.
"TRG" stands for camera trigger signals per position.
To allow a camera to be triggered by MECHA, you need to connect the camera to MECHA using a shutter release cable.
Plug the right shutter cable for the camera in use into the camera port.

You can control the exposure by using MECHA only when Bulb mode is set on your camera, as we have already shown in another video, and we will not talk about it today.
Normally, MECHA can only trigger a camera. It acts like a typical remote shutter release. Auto exposure bracketing is done by the camera.
So you need to set the exposure on your camera.

If you set the camera to take the whole bracketed set of photos with a single press of the shutter, then select "1 TRG" here. MECHA will send a single trigger signal and your camera will take the three bracketed photos.
You only need to select "3 TRG" if you set your camera to take one photo at a time, by pressing your shutter button three times.
"E" is actually the duration of the shutter button signal, and "A" is the delay after each trigger sequence.
The exposure set on your camera should be no greater than "E+A".
For example, if you set 0.25s for the first photo, 0.125s for the second, and 0.5s for the third, there is about 1s in total. So you can set "A" to 2s (to allow the camera to write data to the card, for example), and "E" to 1s.

Let us look at the other settings of the preset.
If your camera is set to manual focus, the AF will be ignored. But note that triggering some Sony cameras is not possible if the AF is zero.
The pause for camera wake-up is 1s.
One second pause before each trigger signal helps reduce camera vibrations.
These two settings are the rotation angle and the number of positions for the "n x LEFT" and "n x RIGHT" buttons, which we don't need now.
"Wait" and "Rewind" tell MECHA to wait after the last shot and rewind to the initial position respectively. But when we have a script, this setting is not taken into account. Instead "RW" can be added in script, if needed. For example, when cables to a power bank are used.
"RW" means rewind, or return, to the starting position on the same path.
"No Repeat" means "execute the preset only once".
The "Scripted" option needs to be selected from this list to make the script visible and be taken into account when executing the preset from the User Interface.
"Speed, Microstepping, Load" and the other settings can be left as they are in this example.

This is a factory preset and cannot be overwritten.
Save the current preset with the Save button and give it a different name.
You can add a power code at the beginning of the preset name.
For values from 020 to 089, the preset is also displayed in the C2’s Preset Menu if the corresponding menu option is empty. Better check first that the option is empty.
Also, see the rules for creating a power code. One of them is that two consecutive digits should not be identical.
Let us add 021.
The new preset can be found in the Presets list in the User Interface and can be used whenever needed.

We can launch this preset in several ways:
from the User Interface,
also from the C2's OLED menu,
or using the controller buttons, due to the power code.

Before launching the preset, check if the upper rail is in the Level position, as required by the preset. Note the "SL" in our script, which stands for "Start Level".
It is not in the Level position. Camera is facing up. So we have to rotate the upper rail from Parked to Level.
You can use Simple Rotations for this purpose, but we're using the User Interface this time.

To make sure that MECHA knows the current position of the upper rail, we will first check that the caption of this button is "SET", then we will click the P button, since our upper rail is in the Parked position.
Next, we will click this button again, to change its caption to "GO", and use the L button to rotate the upper rail to the Level position.

We will launch this preset using the RIGHT button in the User Interface.