Mirror Lockup in Sony Alpha 850

[CesareBrizio]

Dear Sirs,

excuse my English, I'm not English mother tongue.

I'm sorry to ask you such a fundamental question, but it's obvious that something very basic escaped me about the mirror lockup feature.

I'm taking macro pictures with the camera mounted on a small stand. Any way to avoid vibrations to make each picture as steady as possible is welcome.

 

I have found the drive mode to raise the mirror before shooting, but this is an *alternative* to the remote command or to the self timer. In other words, if I have to touch the camera, the advantage offered by the raised mirror vanishes, as long as I may well induce small vibrations.

 

Can you please confirm that the only way to shoot with raised mirror is pressing the shutter button?

 

Have you any suggestion to use the raised mirror option to improve image steadiness?

 

Many thanks, warm regards and all the best,

Cesare Brizio

briziocesare@gmail.com

[Username]

Did you check out the self timer sequence ? Because,  

many SLR self timers raise the mirror at the beginning

of the timer delay, so there is no mirror vibration at the 

finish of the delay when the exposure finally happens.  

   

This might be the reason the controls options are as 

you have described them. IOW, a user does not need 

to intentionally set both the mirror pre-lift AND the self 

timer ... IF the mirror pre-lift is already incorporated in  

the self timer sequence.  

   

The wording in the user manual suggests that all the

above may be just wishful thinking. The manual says 

to raise mirror first, and then use the remove release. 

Therefor you may need to buy the remote release. 

[CesareBrizio]

Thank you for the suggestion, unfortunately it's very clear (both from the noise at the end of the self timer sequence, and from the lach of any indication in that respect) that the self-timer does not raise the mirror at the beginning of the sequence.

So my question is still unanswered - I question the utility of mirror lockup if this requires manual pressure on the shutter button to take the picture.

Thank for any hint that you may provide.

[CesareBrizio]

Just found on http://glaringnotebook.com/?p=1303 in a post about Sony Alpha DSLRA-850:

The Sony RMT-DSLR1 infrared remote controller is not so useful for studio work – you don’t get MLU using the infrared remote.

Various methods to trigger the shutter while reducing vibration:

1) Drive mode set to 2 seconds + shutter release cable = mirror locks up, waits 2 seconds, fires shutter (best results)
2) Drive mode set to remote + infrared remote control (2 sec button) = wait 2 seconds, mirror locks up, fires shutter
3) Drive mode set to 10 seconds + press camera shutter = you press shutter, wait 10 seconds (for hand-induced vibrations to stop), mirror locks up, fires shutter

You can’t use Drive mode in 2 seconds + infrared remote control, unfortunately. That’s why I bought a shutter release cable and use situation #1.

It is also unfortunate that when the remote’s 2 second button is used, there’s no mirror lockup before waiting 2 seconds! I don’t understand why it was programmed that way… if mirror lockup happened before waiting 2 seconds, it would be the best of both worlds.