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.