As has already been mentioned, make sure your camera hasn't gone to 'sleep', by adjusting the 'Auto Power Off' function. Press the menu button, then select 'Set-up', then scroll down to the 'Auto Power Off' option. The default is 1 minute, so adjust this so that it's much longer, for your purposes it might be an idea to turn this feature off for the time being.

If the camera's powered off, the first trigger will wake it up, but it will then need another for the shutter to fire, as far as I know. If it just needs the one trigger, it will still cause a delay while the camera wakes up.

Dan

Sorry, 'OP' is forum speak for 'Original Poster', the person who asks the original question, which was you.

I said "It could be that the OP has a manual focus lens on". I meant you might have a manual lens mounted on your camera, but have the camera set to autofocus, in which case it wouldn't take the photo until it thought the horses were in focus.

Still trying to think what could be the problem.

Okay, another thought. Could the sun be shining on the laser detector? Just wondering if this could be enough to delay the triggering slightly?

Is there any pattern to the shots that are wrong? For example, are the horses always on one side of the track rather than the other, is it later in the day rather than earlier?

Dan

Not bad, but a smaller aperture would have ensured the left hand side was in focus too, and I find the small white highlights on the right side a little distracting. Contrast looks a bit flat too, perhaps you need to play with the curves.

Dan

(Sorry, I shouldn't laugh... :wink

How are you getting on with the rest of your new kit? Feel free to start a new thread if you don't want to hijack dalrichey's thread.

Dan

There is a switch on the camera body, looking from the front, it's bottom right of the lens mount, and this should be set to 'MF'.

Dan

Of sorts, although it takes a very high frame rate, the image taken for each frame is very tall and thin (possibly only a pixel wide?), and is purely of just the finish line. Once the sequence is over, all these thin shots are then assembled into the panoramic picture, which can be thought of as being not so much 10,000 pixels wide, but as 5 seconds wide.

Dan

Well, probably not, but I was (we were, Ted was a little slower than me ) just suggesting a possible solution. It could be that the OP has a manual focus lens on, but has the camera set to AF and it needs the confirmation before it triggers. :

Without knowing the precise details of the set-up, and then being able to replicate that, we can only suggest possibilities.

Dan

P.S. Good point about the trigger Peter. Also, how high is the laser off the ground? Could it be that it's being triggered by the nose of some horses and the chest of others? Or if it's really low, is the first horse 'stepping over' it?

Eadweard Muybridge

Dan

Is the camera set to manual focus? If it's set on autofocus, it may take a split second to confirm that it is focused before the shot is taken. Just a thought.

Dan

Er, don't ignore Prieni, he was perfectly correct with his identification, and Spider's got them round the wrong way. This is a dragonfly (a Yellow Winged Darter, unless I'm mistaken ).

http://www.dragonflysoc.org.uk/faq.html#difference

Dan