Tethered to a laptop...

[CraigEH]

I read in another post someone was shooting tethered to a laptop so that the pictures would display on the laptop screen as they were being taken. How do you do this?

Craig

[swampler]

With Canon, you use the Canon Utility that comes on the CD with the camera and a USB cable. I don't know about other brands.

[nrottley]

With Nikon, you use Camera Control Pro which can either use a USB cable or done wirelessly with the WT4a accessory.

[CraigEH]

Originally Posted by nrottley

With Nikon, you use Camera Control Pro which can either use a USB cable or done wirelessly with the WT4a accessory.

Thanks.

[oldugly]

Craig, I jumped on to ask the same question, only for an Olympus. Sure hope more folks read your post. Canon and Nikon answers don't help me much.

[Brooks]

Originally Posted by oldugly

Craig, I jumped on to ask the same question, only for an Olympus. Sure hope more folks read your post. Canon and Nikon answers don't help me much.

Apparently the Olympus shooting/editing softwar called Olympus Studio Olympus Imaging Software - Olympus Studio 2.0 allows tethered shooting for some Olympus models. Another raw file editing software called Bibble Pro does also. You'll have to Google that one yourself.

[felix.reichardt]

As long you use the Canon Utility/Driver to get the connection you should be able to use Lightroom, Bridge, etc to monitor the folder where the files are saves to.

[oldugly]

Thanks Brooks. I'll have to give up dounuts with my coffee and give that a try.

[swift_wraith]

i use bibble pro and a long usb lead. photos take about 1 secomd to come up onto the monitor. Theyre then stored on the laptops hard drive instead of the camera memory.

[swampler]

Originally Posted by swift_wraith

i use bibble pro and a long usb lead. photos take about 1 secomd to come up onto the monitor. Theyre then stored on the laptops hard drive instead of the camera memory.

I thought it would be stored both places?

[swift_wraith]

not in my experience. although i may have just set it up wrong.

[Mark McCall]

Craig,
We used to do that when shooting pick-a-pack type jobs but we found a better way.

Instead of tethering, we simply plug the camera into a TV monitor (2 actually).
The images are instantly accessable from the camera on both TV's.

The image number appears in the corner of the screen over at the ordering table, and on the TV I have set up for the shooter.

It's far faster than tethering to preview or recall the images as needed.

[HuBBaTheMan]

The benefit of tethering is twofold really. First you or the client/creative director can view the images directly on a calibrated monitor (hard to get the same quality on a TV). Secondly if you set your camera software to store on both memorycard and laptop, you have an instant on location backup of each image. If something happens with the laptop, you still have the memory card. If the memory card is messed up for some reason, you have the images on the laptop.

Actually shot today when this came in handy, had a shoot on location with a 50D and a Macbook , shooting tethered with 2 active USB extenders giving me total of 12 m range. EOS Utility saved to a dir and lightroom used that dir as monitor and instantly imported the images. And in EOS utility, it was set to save to both card and computer.

Now the problem occured when shooting rapid sequences for a long period of time then EOS Utility locked up and refused to download. This meant i had to shut down the utility, sometimes reboot the macbook, and then download the missing images off the camera for import. If i had not shot to both card and computer, those images would have been gone.

[camrajoky]

Originally Posted by oldugly

Craig, I jumped on to ask the same question, only for an Olympus. Sure hope more folks read your post. Canon and Nikon answers don't help me much.

Olympus has Studio MAster software that teathers the camera to your laptop for instant viewing and auto downloading to HD

[CraigEH]

Originally Posted by Mark McCall

Craig,
We used to do that when shooting pick-a-pack type jobs but we found a better way.

Instead of tethering, we simply plug the camera into a TV monitor (2 actually).
The images are instantly accessable from the camera on both TV's.

The image number appears in the corner of the screen over at the ordering table, and on the TV I have set up for the shooter.

It's far faster than tethering to preview or recall the images as needed.

So just use the video cable that usually comes with the camera and plug it into a TV?

[FatNakedGuy]

Here is a free HOWTO for Canon that is pretty decent:
Free Tethered Shooting for Canon digital SLR cameras


And this is the very cool utility I use to do wireless tethering between my Canon Mark IIn and a PC (not free but works AWESOME.. should also use USB)
http://www.pixagent.com/itp20/index.html

[HuBBaTheMan]

That HowTo only works if you are shooting Jpeg though as the windows fax & printer preview wont handle RAW files.

But switch that to something like ZoomBrowser or DPP and it works just as well.

[Sparc]

Apple's Aperture supports tethered shooting for those cameras in this list (and for those who own a Mac and Aperture of course)

[Bob B]

I have a Canon Rebel XSi and it has 'live view ' which allows me to focus and compose the image while looking at the laptop screen.

[Max@Home]

Originally Posted by nrottley

With Nikon, you use Camera Control Pro which can either use a USB cable or done wirelessly with the WT4a accessory.

...Breeze Systems recently introduced the 'wired utility' software for the D90 and D300

D300 / D90 tethered shooting software!

Kindest regards!

Max@Home