EOS 7D Mk II won't load images over 3 minutes

SFNv4Yt7

I have been testing and successfully saving images up to 2 minutes exposure with my 7D Mk2 without a problem using my AsiAir Plus and iPad.

However, when I increase my exposure to 3 minutes and above, the AsiAir Plus shows 'Loading' in green on the iPad but it never progresses to the white bar and then loading speed in green and the system will not progress pas this without cancelling the autorun that was saving the 3 minute exposure.

There are not problems at all under 3 minutes.

Does anyone have a solution?

Thanks

Jim

Tech@ZWO

SFNv4Yt7 Refer to this to check the settings first.

If the problems still remains, could you restore factory settings of 7D mark II to try?

SFNv4Yt7

Tech@ZWO , thanks for that. The problem is that under Autorun it works fine with any exposures of 2 seconds and below. Once I increase exposure time to 180s (3 mins) the image is captured but gets stuck at the loading phase - show Loading in green at bottom right but fails to progress to showing the white bar and transfer speed.

Al settings are as mentioned above except image quality. Shooting RAW does not give an image quality option, Just RAW, MRAW and SRAW. I am using RAW and as stated, this works fine for exposures 120 s and below. I believe image quality only refers to JPEG which I am not shooting.

I have reset the 7D to factory settings and next cloudless night I will test again at 30s, 120s and 180s. I will then report findings here. Out of interest, how long should I wait for loading to complete before aborting the process?

Thanks
Jim

SFNv4Yt7

Further to the above, here is an extract from the log

"2023/11/09 18:50:59 [Autorun|Begin] M31 Start
2023/11/09 18:50:59 Target RA:0h44m3s DEC:+41°29'39"
2023/11/09 18:50:59 Shooting 1 light frames, exposure 180.0s Bin1
2023/11/09 18:50:59 Exposure 180.0s image 1#
2023/11/09 18:56:34 Stop Autorun Manually
2023/11/09 18:56:40 [Autorun|End] Pause Autorun
Log disabled at 2023/11/09 18:56:40

As you can see, capture started at 18.50.59 and by 18.56.40 it has still. not loaded. I have waited longer than this before with the same result so cut it short at around 6 minutes.

Tech@ZWO

SFNv4Yt7 Did you turn on AEB? turn off it to try.

SFNv4Yt7

Tech@ZWO Hi, AEB is not available on 7D Mk2 when shooting RAW, so I have not enabled it.

SFNv4Yt7

Further testing has revealed that it takes 3 min 30 approximately to load a 3 min exposure from the 7D Mk2. This is consistent over 10 exposures

I subsequently switched to testing using my EOS R6. The same 3 minute exposure consistently loaded in around 3 seconds for each of 10 exposures.

My conclusion is therefore that the problem lies in getting data from the 7D to the AsiAir and it is a limitation that I will not be able to overcome at this end.

It may be worthwhile for further testing of the 7D Mark 2 for exposures over 3 minutes to be undertaken by your engineers

Thanks for you help

Jim

Tech@ZWO

SFNv4Yt7 Could you reproduce the problem and upload the log for analysis? (About -> bug report)

Note: the log will be cleared after you power off the ASIAIR.

SFNv4Yt7

Tech@ZWO Hi. Bug report submitted under 0003345

Today the first 2 exposures loaded after 3.5 minutes and the 3rd exposure failed after trying to load for around 3 minutes 35 seconds.