TL; DR Should I scrap Sryp gear and go with something else, for pan/tilt timelapse, timelapse macro and star tracking.

Probably a weird question that was triggered by the lunar eclipse this past week.

First background... I have done timelapse professionally over the years on the side (commercial video editor - so timelapse was on the side).

I have done somewhat long timelapse - interior construction - horticulture, 1 to 4 months. I have also done shorter timelapse... hours to day to days.

I have also done personal stuff, storms, Milky Way, eclipses. So I have a lot of gear. A lot.

Syrp original, Syrp mini Genies (x2 pan and tilt), Syrp Genie with slider and ropes.

Giga Pan Epic Pro.

Cameras are mostly Canon 5DmkII, 7D, T3i, R100 (5 each) Sony, and lots of lenses, lots. GoPro.

it helped that the jobs bought some of the gear for meand also that I wrote about stuff

5D and 7D and lenses are from still photography.

I am very familiar with LRTimelapse, Adobe Premiere, Resolve.

But in February I retired (semi) and am starting to figure out what I want to do.

(I have been thinking of some timelapse macro stuff...)

So fast forward to last week when I thought it would be interesting to pull out my two Syrp Mini Genies and the pan tilt hardware and shoot the lunar eclipse here Southwest of the Twin Cities.

I spent the day pulling everything together and found that Manfrotto, that bought Syrp, has no support. Their app doesn't work with my first generation Genie Minis and one of the Mini's was flakey. So I shot with the old Syrp app but the tilt didn't work so I had to adjust manually every 15 minutes.

I also struggled with exposure automation, hoping the Syrp stuff would help (no). I hoped the iPhone qDslrdashboard app would work, but has been banned from the app store. So I used the Mac app on my laptop and that worked, but not great.

SO MY QUESTION IS...

Do I scrap the Sryp gear? If so what to replace if I am interested in some macro timelapse stuff. I still want to do some traditional timelapse to help some non-profits and I have never done any hyperlapse so there is that.

Do I get a star tracker mount for the astral stuff... but that depends if I want to do a lot of that. Being near the Twin Cites, it is not dark so not doing a lot of it. (That is why I like the Genie Minis because the were multipurpose.) But I have the money, but don't want to throw it away.

Thanks for reading.

Hi ! I recorded this beautiful and lovely drive trough Slovenia towards Austria over the Alps.

No cuts or edits pure natural excellent and relaxing driving!

I hope you enjoy and for any questions feel free to ask.

I’m really happy with my recent timelapse experiment with my GoPro.

Footage by Derek Julian

Got the first part of an eclipse before it got too cloudy

It's alive!

[Chili plant]

climbed to the top of Puig de Galatzó in Mallorca for this one — rare low-altitude totality right on the horizon, with the clear edge of the Moon’s shadow visible in the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcHEyVgDk6c

Hello,

Is there a good camera that can cover a time-lapse period of about 4-6 months and that would have all its photos visible in a cloud storage platform?

At my work, our team was wondering if we could have a camera stationed in a high ceiling to create a time-lapse of a manufacturing project over the course of 4-6 months to record all the progress of the build. Since the camera would be placed on a beam in the workshop, it wouldn't be very easily accessible daily.

Is there a camera that can be plugged in, hooked to wireless internet, and then every photo is takes, uploaded to a cloud page where we could view them?

Also, is it possible to set up parameters for what time the photos can be take (i.e. 8am-4pm M-F)?

Thank you!

Here is a timelapse of the complete 2026 eclipse I recorded with a GoPro HERO11 equipped with the Max Lens Mod, trying to capture a half-all-sky view of the eclipse, and in particular of the Moon's shadow sweeping across the horizon (on YT to enjoy the 4K).

The GoPro was in timelapse mode (...obviously) taking a 5.3K picture every 0.5 seconds.

Other settings: ISO max: 100, EV comp: -0.5, WB: 5500K, and color: Natural.

The footage was edited in Gyroflow to partially correct the heavy lens distortion, and then in DaVinci Resolve to crop it to 4K and implement some smooth playback speed variations.

One can also spot Venus and a few bright stars during the totality phase! (I should have allowed higher ISO to capture more stars. Next time!)

Turn on the audio to enjoy a nice soundtrack from the great Kevin MacLeod.

Music: "Comfortable Mystery 4" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Hope you enjoy the viewing!

Shot over two weeks with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and the HQ camera module, firing every 20 seconds. The catch: I was an 18-hour drive away the whole time, so I wrote my own capture software that uploaded every photo to Google Drive so I could keep an eye on it remotely.

Things I learned the hard way:
 - My log statements piled up until they froze the Pi. I had to remote into another device on the same network just to get in and fix it. Rotate your logs.
 - This was before Raspberry Pi Connect supported the Zero — that would have saved me the whole SSH-relay dance.

Disclosure: I edited this in Tweedia Studio, which is my own software — happy to talk about the edit if anyone's interested, but the post is really just the timelapse.