# Long exposures won't record to 5d mark iii



## GoodVendettaPhotography (Mar 30, 2013)

This is an upsetting thing for me, considering what I love the most is doing startrails. I took my camera out tonight, slapped on the 17mm ts-e and tried to do a 20 minute exposure. Once I was done, the red processing light remained on for a good five minutes...I turned the camera off and a screen popped up saying, "recording image to disk"...I let this screen run for 10mins before taking my battery out and killing the cycle.

Has anyone run into this problem?

Do I have a defective mark iii?

I have yet to do any firmware updates..

My first thought was my memory card is not fast enough, but it's sandisk extreme cf 60mb/s. I tried an "extreme pro" 90mb/s and I ran into the same issue.

Any help would be wonder as this is really bumming me out 

Ps: 30 sec exposures take about 45secs to record and pop up as a preview....

Thanks!


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## davidson (Mar 30, 2013)

you may have long exposure noise reduction turned on. It's just a guess on my part though, I may be wrong


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## Atonegro (Mar 30, 2013)

davidson said:


> you may have long exposure noise reduction turned on. It's just a guess on my part though, I may be wrong



+1


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## AUGS (Mar 30, 2013)

davidson said:


> you may have long exposure noise reduction turned on. It's just a guess on my part though, I may be wrong



+1. Go to page 144 of your manual (Camera3 tab if the camera is available) and check your setting. Effectively, long exposure noise reduction "doubles" your image capture time, and sounds like what you are experiencing. You may have just interrupted the process.
Hope this solves your problem.


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## wayno (Mar 30, 2013)

Yes that was my thought too - however someone experienced in star trails I'm guessing should/would be aware of this? Personally I never use it. Hope that's the solution for you.


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## Mr Bean (Mar 30, 2013)

As what others have said about NR.....

My first attempt at star trails with the 5D3 was 3hrs. No problems with the camera, except the image was way too noisy. The "proper" way to do star trails, so I discovered, was to do a heap of 2min exposures, convert to TIF, then use a program called "startrails.exe" (from a German bloke) which "stacks" the images, and effectively "joins the short trails, into one image, for this type of result (I think this was just over an hour, from the back step of the house, as a test)........






Suggestion: Shoot RAW, not JPEG, as you are dealing with a lot of black with some faint points of light. I found that the effect of JPEG could result in blotchy "blacks".


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## sandymandy (Mar 30, 2013)

If you have noise reduction turned on your camera will take TWO shots with the same exposure. So 20 mins*2 = 40 minutes. The second photo is used to calculate the noise reduction.


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## neuroanatomist (Mar 30, 2013)

GoodVendettaPhotography said:


> Do I have a defective mark iii?
> 
> I have yet to do any firmware updates..



You have a wetware problem.


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## GoodVendettaPhotography (Mar 30, 2013)

JESUS, guys! Thank you! It was because my noise reduction was turned on! Thank you! I'm glad it was a simple fix!


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