Canon5Dtips Photography is more than words.
Introduction
Once again, we have another camera trigger in our hands — the Nero Trigger. Throughout this review, we’ll explore the physical features, modes, pros and cons of the Nero Trigger. Also, we’ll give recommendations that can be used to make it even better. In another article, we’ll give a comprehensive comparison between Nero and Triggertrap v1.
What’s in The Package?
Nero packages the device and cables in attractive boxes. The trigger comes with a manual and cable for your camera. You can pick the styling of your Nero device from 6 colours – see the colours on their site. Bravo Nero!
First Impression
Nero is a small, light device with hot shoe adapter on the bottom. Very well built casing, still not weather or waterproof but it sure looks professional and well built.
Buttons are firm and easy to navigate over menus. It is pretty easy to put in or replace batteries, battery case is on bottom along side with hot shoe adapter.
Physical Features
Housing and Connectors:
– Small compact casing with a hot shoe
– Colour LCD display
– Small LED displays when the device is triggering
– 2 batteries AAA (easy to change)
– Few buttons for modes and options
– Side button to turn the device ON/OFF
– 2 connectors on the side for a camera or flash
– 1 sensor receiver in front for laser and light
– 1 Ext (input) connector on side for DIY
Software
Modes:
- Lightning
- Sound
- Timelapse
- Laser
- HDR
- DIY
Options under each mode:
Lightning Mode
Sensitivity range of 0 to 99
As the name suggests, it triggers the camera for each lightning event. Lightning mode has a sensitivity range of 0 to 99, with 0 being the lowest sensitivity, and 99 being the highest sensitivity. To set it up properly before use, adjust sensitivity to maximum, if it triggers your camera continuously, then you should decrease the sensitivity until it stops.
Our opinion: There are a couple of options that would make this mode more controllable, such as: On Rise, On Fall and On Change options; as well as a display with the number of shots we would like to take with a manual delay option between shots. Nevertheless Nero Lightning mode is pretty simple to use.
Sound Mode
Sensitivity from 0 up to 999
Delay is from 0 up to 9999 ms (10 sec)
Lock, options ON or OFF
How to use it for the first time in Sound Mode: Set the sensitivity to highest first and decrease until it doesn’t trigger continuously. Then produce a sound and see the result. If you find it too sensitive then decrease the sensitivity until you find the right setting.
When Lock parameter is ON, it triggers your camera only once and goes back to the Sound Menu where you can set things as you wish or just start triggering again.
Delay after each shot is around 500ms to avoid infinite loop of shutter sound, that is if you don’t use a Lock ON option.
There is a simple trick behind this awesome shot. After setting up the background and flashguns, we filled the glasses, glued them on top of the white board and dropped them from around 15″ (inch) height (one side, while the other side was on still on the table). At first Nero was too fast, triggering our flash at the spot where the board with glasses just hit the surface and there was no liquid movement, so we added around 40ms delay in Nero settings to achieve the result you can see above.
When used with Flashes, even Sound mode is pretty fast and you can achieve stunting results, check for example:Graham article about Nero Sound Mode.
Timelapse Mode
Interval from 00:01 seconds up to 60 minutes
Exposure from 00:00 seconds up to 60 minutes
Limit from 0 up to 9999 photos. (you’ll need 30 seconds to get from 0 up to 9999 and another 30 to go back while holding left or right button).
If you make a great Timelapse video, let us know and share with us ;)
Laser Mode
Threshold from 0 up to 999
Delay (ms) 0 up to 999
Frame from 1 up to 999 (Number of triggers in a row separated approximately around 200-250ms)
LM displayed on Nero LCD when you point your laser into laser sensor on Trigger
Delay between multiple laser beam break, around 500ms
We would like to see the same option that Sound Mode has, Lock ON.
Similar to the sound setup, the image above was made again very simple. We placed Nero on a light stand, while the laser was placed on the opposite side. You can get any laser as long as the beam is constant. We used one from ebay and taped it down to produce a constant beam. After that, we pointed the beam towards Nero and then adjusted the placement of Nero until ‘LM’ displayed on LCD. We set our bottom picture frame to level with the table surface (where the glasses should fall) and the top frame margin was set just under the laser beam to avoid seeing it in a final shot. The height at which the glasses were dropped was just above the laser beam that was around 19 inches above the surface. Glasses were dropped from one hand. At that point, if we let Nero to trigger the flash, it would fire so fast that the glasses wouldn’t even be in the frame, thus we applied a 250ms delay to get this shot.
HDR Mode
Center (middle exposure) goes from 1/30 up to 15 seconds
EV (+/-) goes from 1/3 up to 1
Frame (number of shots) can be 3, 5 or 7
DIY Mode
Threshold from 0 up to 999
Delay (ms) from 0 up to 999
Mode: Falling, Rising, Change.
Note: Diy mode is for Ext input, read the manual about that, be very careful with input and voltages.
Nero Trigger at work
Nero has two outputs, Camera and Flash. Both outputs are triggered at the same time, meaning that you can connect both Camera and Flashes at the same time.
Note: that if you trigger both at the same time, the camera would be way behind the flash, so there is no use to trigger both in the same time. You can instead use the two ports to trigger two flashes, or even two cameras.
Nero Trigger has already integrated option to delay after the first shot is made. While this is a great feature in most cases, it can be annoying because you sometimes need to trigger on a second event. True, if you would choose a sound mode and set sensitivity high with Nero being close to your camera, Nero would go into an infinite loop with a shutter sound of your camera (but Nero doesn’t have to be close to the camera and can be in other modes where delay is still present). Not a bad feature to avoid infinite loop in case you are close to your camera and sound mode, but as said I would like to see some manual control over it.
When Nero is in Laser Mode, LM is displayed on the LCD when a laser beam is pointed in front of the light sensor – very useful add-on to know when your laser beam is at the right (sweet) spot. Laser Frame option is a great feature to capture multiple shots. When Nero is used as a camera trigger it would act somewhat as burst mode and when used as a flash trigger it would be for capturing long exposure moment multiple times, making the moving subject(s) appear on different locations in one frame.
Note that if you don’t touch anything after being in any mode, Nero will go to “sleep” (battery saving mode), blinking red LED in the bottom left.
Conclusion
We don’t own the model before this last edition of Nero Trigger so we can’t talk about any upgrades and features, except obvious improvement: LCD.
New Nero Trigger with its size and weight is so easy to carry around. We had no trouble setting it up and making amazing images in a matter of minutes. It was a pleasure to use Nero with such ease and I have to add that support is fast and does an amazing job, answering all our questions.
You can check out ‘behind the scenes’ photos on our facebook page
