Canon 5DMkIV NINA Errors / Lockups

[Jim Waters]

Description

If N.I.N.A. Rel 1.10 HF1 RC001 ‘Camera Timeout’ is too short N.I.N.A. will fail to download and enters into an error mode. If you try to take additional images the Sequencer will eventually stop working. The camera may lock-up too. To clear this you sometimes need to physically disconnect, cycle its power and reconnect the camera. The default N.I.N.A. ‘Camera Timeout’ is 60 sec. The average 5DMkIV download time for a RAW only image is ~95 sec.

Note: The average download time for the Canon EOS Utility is 16 seconds for the 5DMkIV (RAW). If you increase N.I.N.A.s ‘Camera Timeout’ to 120 sec these errors do not occur and the CR3 image will display correctly.

I don’t know what the typical download times are for other CR3 based camera's but an easy fix would be to increase the DSLR default ‘Camera Timeout’ to say something like 120 sec.

Equipment

• Canon 5DMkIV running firmware 1.1.2
• Lenovo E440 running Win 10 Home Build 1902

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start N.I.N.A.
2. Connect camera (5DMkIV) and turn it On set to Bulb.
3. Scan for camera and ‘Connect’
4. Open Sequencer and set up an imaging sequence (Total # 3, Time 180) and push ‘start’.
5. Four errors will be displayed. See log.
6. Reset sequence to restart and push ‘start’.
7. One additional error will be displayed.
8. Reset sequence to restart and push ‘start’.
9. …etc errors varies at this point

Note: Steps 6 through 9 errors will vary from time to time and the 5DMkIV may lock up forcing the user to physically disconnect the camera, cycle its power and reconnect. The Sequencer may also stop working and do nothing when you ‘reset’ and push ‘start’.

I would expect errors / lockups from other camera’s if the ‘Camera Timeout’ is too short.

Expected Behavior

Work as expected.

Actual Behavior

See above and log file.

[Dale Ghent]

I’m not sure why download speed would be so different since there’s really only 1 way to do it in EDSDK, so we should effectively mirror EOS Utility in that regard

[Stefan B]

Hi,

the timeout time is NOT including the download of the image, but the interval between the finished exposure time and the signal to start downloading the image. 95 seconds for that is not normal. It should be a couple of seconds at max. Do you have dark frame substraction or something similar enabled?

[Jim Waters]

Dark frame subtraction is not being done - LSNR is Off. Is ‘Camera Timeout’ a connection time out? The errors don’t occur if I increase the time from 60 to 120 sec. The errors start after the first sub completes.

Sub 1 starts, Sub 1 completes and starts to download. After 60 seconds you get error messages. After the shutter closes the camera takes 95 sec to complete the download then the shutter closes again.

Dual Pixel Raw is enabled.

I have tested the same camera with BackyardEOS and SGPro. The times are between 90 to 95 sec.

[Jim Waters]

I played around with testing more and this is the first time this happened at 'Camera Timeout' = 120 sec

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[Jim Waters]

UPDATE - Consider this bug resolved / closed. I borrowed another 5DMkIV camera and tested it against 1.10 HF1 RC001 and it worked. There are no error messages and the camera downloads image in 2 or 3 seconds – no lockups or errors.. Even though my camera works with all the Canon apps and SGPro it takes an excessively long time to download. Long Exposure Noise Reduction was OFF. I sent my camera into Canon USA for repair.

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[Stefan B]

Alright. Thanks for the update. Hope your camera gets fixed soon!