The Photo Series screen allows the management of different kinds of Photo Series and includes means for series configuration, lifecycle management, photo shooting and supervision.
A series is a sequence of photos taken with specific time intervals. Special kinds of series are Timelapse Series, Exposure Series and Focus Stacks.
When the Photo Series screen is opened for the first time, it offers the option to create a new series:
You need to enter a unique name for the series. Since the name will be used as folder name and as part of the filename for photos, you need to consider any restrictions for systems where you want to store and process these files.
Linux is quite tolerant in this aspect but it is recommended using only letters, numbers and underscore characters.
When a series is initially created, some parameters are predefined which later need to be configured:
- The lifecycle of a Photo Series is represented as its Status.
Transitions between different states can be initiated by one or two buttons at the right of the series selection combo box.
For details see the Series State Chart. - If multiple series have been created, the active series can be selected with a combo box showing the series names.
- The Series Type distinguishes "Normal" series without special characteristics from specialized series, such as "Exposure Series", "Focus Stacks" or "Timelapse Series".
- The Path is the path where all resources for the series are located.
For details see Photo Series in the File System - The system has also initialized a Series Configuration File a Series Log File and a Camera Settings File.
- In addition, a "hist" subdirectory has been created where histogram images will be stored (currently only for Exposure Series).
- Under Photo Type, it can be selected whether only
jpgorraw+jpgphotos shall be taken. - The Start time is initiated with the current time.
This needs to be set to the time when the series shall start. - The End time can be set explicitly if a specific end time is required.
If this is done, the number of shots will be calculated based on the specified Interval - As Interval , the time difference (in seconds) between successive shots can be specified.
From experience, the system will observe the given value within a tolerance of about 30 ms. - The Number of Shosts specifies the numper of photos intended for the series.
If the End time has not been explicitly specified, it will be calculated from Interval and Number of Shots considering the specified Start time. - The checkbox Cont. on Server Start allows to automatically continue an active series in case of a server restart.
Such a situation may happen if the server is stopped (explicitly or implicitly with a device shutdown) while a series is active.
For example, if you have a long running timelapse series, there might be power outages forcing a system reboot. If you have set the series to automatic continuation it will be continued as soon as the server is restarted. Otherwise, it will be in status PAUSED.
Automatic continuation is not used for Exposure Series or Focus Stack series because these series are typically not running for a longer time.
After the values have been entered, pressing the Submit button will calculate dependent parameters an change the status of the series to "READY".
For Photo Series of type Exposure Series, Focus Stack and Timelapse Series, additional configurations are required.
A series in state "READY" can be started with the Start button.
This will execute the following steps:
- Set the status to "ACTIVE"
- Configure the camera with the active Configuratien for "Photo" or "Raw Photo", depending on the selected Photo Type
- Apply the active Camera Controls
For Exposure Series and Focus Stack, specific controls will be adjusted or varied for each photo. - Start the camera
- Wait until the start time
- Execute the necessary capture request (jpg, dng, metadata)
- Store the metadata in the Series Log File
- Store the camera configuration as well as the controls parameters, which have been applied before request execution, in the Camera Settings File
- Wait until the next interval and repeat steps from 6. until either the configured Number of Shots or the configured End time has been reached.
- Finally, the series status will be "FINISHED".
While the series is "ACTIVE", this is shown by the Series status indicator and the screen will show the progress:
In the Preview area, the time for the next photo to be taken is shown and the progress bar shows the time remaining.
When the photo time is reached, the page will be reloaded and the latest photo will be shown on top. The last 20 photos are available in the scroll area.
A series can be downloaded at any time after it has been created.
Whether or not a series has been downloaded is shown under Downloaded which is either "Never" or the time of the last download.
Pushing the Download button will require a confirmation before download will be executed.
The download will be named raspiCamSrvSeries_<name>_<YYYYMMDDHHMMSS> with the timestamp of the download.
The download is a zip archive including the entire folder structure of the series (see Photo Series in the File System):
- All photos taken until the time of download
- The Series Cofiguration file
- The Series Camera File (which will be empty if no camera configuration has been attached to the series)
- The Series Log File (which will be empty if the series has not yet been started)
- A subfolder
histcontaining histograms, in case the series has been an Exposure Series
When a series has ended or after it has been actively finished with the Finish button, its status is shown as "FINISHED":
If the series has been downloaded after it had ended, can be seen by comparing the respective timestamps.
If the Configuration for the Photo and Raw Photo use cases are compliant with the configuration for Live View, the Live Stream will not be interrupted while the series is ACTIVE.
For more details, see raspiCamSrv Tasks and Background Processes
Simultaneous activity of Live Stream and Photo Series is indicated by the process status indicators:
If the series is an Exposure Series or a Focus Stack Series, Camera Controls will be modified while the series is active.
Auto Exposure and Auto White Balance will be deactivated and other parameters, such as Exposure Time, Analogue Gain or Focal Distance/Lens Position will vary from photo to photo.
These variations will be visible in the Live Stream.
After the series is FINISHED, the original control parameters will be restored.
If the Live Stream is paused because photo taking requires exclusive camera access because of specific Configuration (see raspiCamSrv Tasks and Background Processes), this is indicated by the process status indicators:
and a placeholder image will be schown instead of the Live Stream:
While a Photo Series is ACTIVE, photo- and video taking is disabled:
The thread in which the Photo Series is executed, checks every 2 seconds whether a request to pause or stop has been issued.
If the series shall be paused and (possibly) continued later, the Pause button in the Series screen can be used.
If the series shall be interrupted and terminated, the Finish button can be used.
Before a Photo Series is started, normally the camera configuration and controls will manually be adjusted for optimal photo quality.
These settings (configuration and controls) can be attached to a Photo Series with the Attach Camera Config button.
These will be persisted in the series configuration file
If this has been done, the system offers to activate these settings at a later time:
So, if another series shall be run with the same or a similar setup, the camera configuration and control settings can be reused after they have been activated.
This feature can also be used to persist specific settings under an indicative name (the series name), also if it is not intended to really run such a series.
All resources related to a Photo Series are stored in the file system under
/home/<user>/prg/raspi-cam-srv/RaspiCamSrv/static/photoseries/<name>
where <user> is the user ID specified during system setup and <name> is the name of the series.
After Creation of a new Series, the folder has been created and a Series Configuration File, a Series Log File and a Series Camera File have been initiated:
.
After the series has been started, also all photos (.jpg) and, if selected, also the raw photos (.dng) can be found in this folder:
.
Typically, photo series will be processed on another system, especially if they have been taken with a Raspberry Pi Zero system.
RaspiCamSrv does not provide any means to download or transfer these data. There are numerous tools to achieve this (e.g. scp, Samba)
The file <name>_cfg.json contains the entire configuration of a series, including, if attached, the camera configuration and camera controls.
When the server starts up, all folders under .../photoseries are searched for a configuration file and series configurations are created from their contents. These will then be available in the raspiCamSrv Photo Series dialog.
The file <name>_log.csv contains log entries for each photo of the series:
Bisides the name of the photo and the time of creation, the most important metadata are included which have been captured in the same request as the Raw Photo and / or jpg Photo.
The file <name>_cam.json contains a JSON structure with the camara configuration and the camera controls applied for each photo of the series. This is available only for Exposure Series and Focus Stack Series.
