GH5 Can the camera stay on indefinitely?

BobKo

BobKo

Well-known member
I am trying to shoot a timelapse video for which the camera needs to run for many days (probably 30+), with an interval setting of 10 minutes. In other words, the camera is taking a picture every 10 minutes and will be running that way for more than 30 days. Between photos, the GH5 is turning itself off, then it comes on 10 minutes later to take another photo. That sounds good, except that I just discovered that the camera is not coming back on. It was *mighty* difficult to figure that out when the photo interval is 10 minutes.

I'm running the camera from a power supply, so it is (in theory) connected to continuous power. Is there a menu setting that will tell the camera not to shut down between photo intervals? If I can keep the camera on, it would be easy to tell if... well, if the camera was on. I just looked through the menus on the camera and skimmed all the chapters in the manual, but did not see anything about a default shut-down time.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Did you find out by checking the media/card or just waiting there?

In my experience, cameras in timelapse modes sometimes don't use the LCD. They are powered on and working and continue to take stills and the only way you'd know is by hearing the shutter (if the result isn't on the LCD).

If you're saying the camera completely shuts off (or appears to), like not working at all, then a power setting is putting it to sleep before the 10 minutes. Normally a timeplase mode would override a power setting but you never know with cameras/software.

The default is usually 1-3-5 minutes in every camera I have used (many).

You have to go into the settings (not sure where in that one but usually it's in the main settings where 'format' is or time or LCD brightness, etc) and turn this OFF.
 
NorBro said:
Did you find out by checking the media/card or just waiting there?.
Click to expand...
I first tried using an audio recorder to listen for the click of the shutter. But after listening to an hours-long recording of this with the recorder about 12 inches from the camera, it was unclear whether the noise I was hearing was a shutter click. Whatever the noise was, it was not coming at 10-minute intervals.

So I set up a video camera watching the GH5, and ran it for 20 minutes. Playing it back, the GH5 did not come on at all during that 20 minutes.

I looked all through the menus and did not see a "sleep" setting. I assume one is there somewhere, but I didn't find it.

I do a lot of timelapses. In my experience, if you have a long interval (more than a minute or so), the camera goes to sleep and gives the appearance of turning off. The pilot light goes out and the camera appears to be off. It then comes on at the timelapse interval, takes the photo and turns off again. If you have an interval of 10 seconds (shooting clouds, perhaps), the camera just stays on. This makes sense, as it saves the battery during long timelapse intervals. However, I'm using a power adapter, so I don't really care about battery life.
 
Thank you for the link to the manual. That is excellent info on page 237. However, at the end of notes on that page, it says:

• When using the AC adaptor (optional), [Sleep Mode], [Sleep Mode(Wi-Fi)] and [Power Save LVF Shooting] are disabled.
• When using the AC adaptor (optional), [Auto LVF/Monitor Off] is fixed to [5MIN.].

And I'm using an AC adapter, so now I have to interpret what exactly those sentences are saying. All I know is that I'm running a timelapse with 10-minute intervals, and the camera goes to sleep between shots. And at some point (at around 200 shots into a 6,000-shot timelapse), the camera went to sleep and did not wake up. And it is hard to determine that has happened, so I'd just like to keep the camera on all the time.

Thanks for the help!
 
yeah, the typical limitations/asterisks...without having the camera in front of me I'm not exactly sure what that means either, but I would make sure the camera is set to using only the monitor (and not any auto setting where it can go back and forth between the monitor and the EVF if you put your eye or finger towards the eye piece) and then I would test everything thoroughly.

So I'd make sure the camera is only using the monitor (no EVF at all) and then see what the power saving mode says. If it's disabled/greyed out then I would do a light timelapse test, 10 seconds in-between shots like you mentioned above, and run that for 5 minutes to see if the camera's screen shuts off after 5 minutes.

If it does then that's what the note in the manual above means. If it doesn't, I have no idea.

But, to me, if you have the camera using ONLY the monitor then the monitor should never shut off unless there is an overheating control that does it automatically after a certain amount of time. It sounds like the 200 shots took over 30 hours?...maybe it overheated?
 
Not necessarily a fix but maybe a work around. Would it be an issue to have your interval set to every 4 or 5 minutes instead of 10?
 
Unfortunately for me, I have the camera running the timelapse. I don't want to stop it at this point to check the menu settings. But if it stops again (or if I have to stop it for some reason), I will definitely poke around the menus some more. I'm trying to capture the growth and blossoming of an amarylis flower, and I expect it will take at least 2-3 weeks.

Yes, I could shorten the interval. It will mean more photos, of course, but I probably have 150,000 on the counter of this GH5.
 
Since I don't want to stop the timelapse sequence in order to adjust the menu settings, I decided to run a confidence camera. It is looking at the GH5 to see whether the GH5 is coming on every 10 minutes. So far, after three days, the GH5 is running smoothly. I run the confidence camera (an old Canon camcorder) for 20-30 minutes per day, which gives me enough of a recording to check that the GH5 is behaving. Here is what it looks like when the GH5 wakes up and takes another photo in the timelapse sequence:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=5397518380349055
 
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