Canon 350D pc shutter control

[obscura]

To date I have used my Hahnel timer for long exposures and it does work well. I am just taking a look into pc control of the shutter with one of the propriety s/w available. There is one thing that just is not too clear - to me that is. The shutter connect at the camera is a jack plug and at the pc end, USB2. Can this be a direct connect or is a serial/USB convertor required and if so, why? I sense that it is the latter. Whether to make one or not is another matter. Or juststay as I am.(I have pc control of frame downloads).

[Cornelius Varley]

A cable for pc control of your camera can be purchased from Astronomiser or you could make your own. Instructions for the cable can be found here http://www.dslrfocus.com/help/eoscable.htm.

Peter

[obscura]

Thanks Peter.

I have hammered into this since this thread and am getting to grips. I picked up a few circuits that detail jack to D9 serial connector. Thus a serial to USB is also needed and I see refs to FTDI chipsets within the cable. Looking at this final costing would be between £20 - £30. I took a look at Astronomiser but their cables do not include this second cable.

More thought needed here.

Cheers

Brian

[pwalsh61]

Was the cable supplied with the camera?

I was under the impression that remote shutter control of a 350D by a PC was done using a jack plug to DB9 serial cable plugged in to the PC's serial port (or a USB to serial converter if the PC doesn't have a serial port).

The USB cable supplied with the camera should be a mini-B to USB-A type, used to transfer images from the camera to PC.

A computer controlled setup would (presumably) require both cables to be used, with software such as DSLRFocus or AstroPhotographyTool (APT) being used.

Later models such as the 1000D are supplied with EOS Utility software which enables remote shutter control via the USB link, so only one cable is needed.

Hope that helps

[obscura]

I have the miniB to USB A cable which I use for image download using Zoom Browser EX and EOS Utility. I can see the Utility shutter control but that's only good for up to 30 secs with the 350D. I now understand that for shutter control, a cable with 2.5mm jack and a serial D9 modded with opto isolated circuit built in plus a serial to USB cable is needed. No serial port on the laptop. Thus for me, it's two cables - one for image download and one for shutter control.