How to shoot Canon 5D tethered?

[kgphoto]

Looking to try to shoot my 5D tethered. Apparently no fire-wire available, just USB.

Never done this before. Tried with my wifes Fuji S2 and no luck. I think I am limited to a 12 foot max cord, but anyone have any other tips as to what is the best/easiest approach?

I have CS2 on a PC laptop with A/C adapter for the Laptop.

My goal is to shoot and have the images show up on the large screen on the lab top so I can see them quick and easy, allow the guest to make the choice as to which image, and then process in PS to do 1-5x7 and 4 wallets on one 8x10 sheet of photo paper. I want to have a water mark showing the event title and date and maybe a copyright notice for me.

I intend to print on an Epson inkjet printer. If anyone has a recommendation as to the printer I am open to that as well. I don't like ink jets and would rather rent one than own one, so buying a cheap one to toss at the end is an option as well. I used to have an inkjet, but the inks dried up and clogged it and it was more expensive to repair than replace.

[tomrock]

Check on the Canon CD for that camera. The 40D comes with a utility to do this so I guess the 5D may, too.

[Harry]

I just started doing this with my 5D. Easiest way is to use DPP and EOS Utility, should have come with your camera. Once you have them in your laptop, plug in the camera to your usb port. Make sure you have the output, in the camera menu, set to PC and not printer. There are preferences in DPP for you to set, that I'm not going to get into right now. Fire up your laptop, start DPP, turn on your camera, start the EOS Utility from the tools menu in DPP. It should recognize your camera. You won't see anything show up until you take the first shot, then it should start showing your shots as you take them. If you start EOS Utility while the camera is turned on, it may fail to find the camera, in that instance, shut the camera off and then back on, it should show up then. You will also need to set up a dedicated file in your computer to shoot to.

[HuBBaTheMan]

The easiest and cheapest is definately DPP and EOS Utility though me personally have found EOS Utility to be a bit easy to crash especially with the 40D and 450D cameras. May just be my crappy computer though.

There are however other options which can be found on this forum (i think) but i'll run them through real quick.

EOS Utility for capture, Lightroom for viewing:

You set the EOS Utility to capture to a directory, and then have Lightroom watch that using the Auto import feature. A bit slow but you get your photos directly imported into lightroom with all the nice perks and viewing features of that.

Capture One 3.x Pro

Expensive, but if you have a 5D this is a killer solution (afaik as i unfortunately have the unsupported 40D & 450D when it comes to tethered =). Same functionality as you will get with Lightroom in terms of viewing and organizing but all in one package. Quite nice way to present the images aswell and the raw conversion is great.

Bibble Studio Pro

Haven't used this much but some users like it. It also has direct tethered support for the 5D and viewing and organizing in the software making it easier to show directly for your clients.

Breezesys DSLR Remote

By far in my opinion the neatest solution and the one i went for (especially when capture one is doing the old osterich technique with tethered support right now . It handles all Canon DSLR's and will do everything EOS Utility will do for free but reconnects more gracefully than the utility and have built in viewing directly in the software. I opted for this as i wrote before and i use it to evaluate the picture directly and also let the client see the results.
This software however wont rank your images (afaik) so letting the client select directly through it may not be the best option. I think in that case that the previous ones are the better solutions.

Hope this gives you a few more insights in what options there are. And if anyone have any other software/options feel free to share them.

/Henrik

[kgphoto]

Henrik,

Thank you very much. It was very helpful.

Also Thank you to Harry,, who I thanked on another thread.

[kgphoto]

OK the day came and went.

I use EOS utilities to control the capture and viewed in Bridge with CS2. Worked great as long as the person using the computer didn't keep shutting down the EOS by using the "X" rather than the "-".

Really nice in that the images downloaded to the camera card and the computer file, instant back up. I shot RAW + JPEG. Definitely would do this again. I will set up my studio camera stand with a laptop and then take that to the sales room to run the sales.

At the event it was a big plus to see the images on the big screen for selecting and chimping.

[20DNewbie]

Originally Posted by kgphoto

OK the day came and went.

I use EOS utilities to control the capture and viewed in Bridge with CS2. Worked great as long as the person using the computer didn't keep shutting down the EOS by using the "X" rather than the "-".

Really nice in that the images downloaded to the camera card and the computer file, instant back up. I shot RAW + JPEG. Definitely would do this again. I will set up my studio camera stand with a laptop and then take that to the sales room to run the sales.

At the event it was a big plus to see the images on the big screen for selecting and chimping.

Alt+Tab combo is your friend in this situation.

[kgphoto]

Thanks Christian,

Not quite sure what that means, but I will hook up the system and try it to see if I can figure it out.

K

[HuBBaTheMan]

I think he meant that the people using the computer should have alt tabbed instead of trying to minimize the application. (alt-tab switches between running application on windows systems (and some others )

Good to hear it worked well for you though. Once you start shooting tethered in a studio i find it very hard to go back to "just" the ol 3" screen (i have a 40D and 450D) . And the fact that the client / makeup & hair / stylist etc can view it directly is SUCH a boon.

/Henrik