Who Shoots Tethered?
If you’re shooting tethered (or wish you could), I’d love to hear about it. How well does it work for you, and what methods are you using?
I love shooting tethered in the studio, but hate the cables. And I’m really not thrilled that due to Canon’s ever-changing protocols, the 1Ds Mk III and 5D Mk II (my two cameras) are still not supported for proper tethering into Aperture. I do wish Aperture had a Lightroom’s “watch folder” feature, where it automatically imports anything that shows up in a specified folder. In the meantime though, we do still have Sal’s Aperture Hot Folder script, which works but is a little slow… it’s Applescript after all, not a native part of the app. It also means I have to use Canon’s software, which frankly, is abysmal.
I got it in my head that I could so something really clever using an Eye-Fi card and this script, and in fact there’s a video on how to do it right here. For some reason it wasn’t importing JPEG’s and even in the support page it says it doesn’t work. So I spoke to Sal, and he looked at the script, and said “it should work”. So I tried again… and, um, it did!
There’s more to the story than this. I’m finally able to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time with wireless tethered shooting, and I’ll write up the full thing here soon. In the meantime, I have to ask… does anyone even care?
Comments
on April 21, 2010 - 10:49pm
I too shoot with a mark111 and to the canon software. A hot folder would be great but one where you could could collect all the images but during the shoot you could turn off a button “Not these” or “Import these”. During a food shoot 3/4ths of the images are not used or needed in aperture, only the final ones when everything is 90% wired in. Iin other words the folder could collect all but it only imports the heros.
No Adujustmest are made in Cannon Software, First adjustments in Aperture, final in PS. FYI
David Phx AZ
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
on April 22, 2010 - 9:52am
I’ve been playing with OnOne’s DSLR Camera Remote in conjunction with Aperture Hot Folder script. Focus and camera settings adjustable from my iPod Touch. Picture returns to iPod. An iPad version is supposedly coming. Only thing missing from this being ideal is a wireless connection from the camera to WiFi to replace USB connection to MacBook Pro. Camera is the T1i.
on April 22, 2010 - 6:22pm
I’ve shot a handful of times tethered to Aperture with a D700. But most recently with A3, I found that waiting for the image to pop up on screen (felt like about 5 seconds from shutter click) took too long. Perhaps it was due to RAW decoding + other processes, perhaps my hardware just didn’t support the sort of snapiness I was looking for, but I eventually unplugged as it was killing the flow of the portrait session.
on April 23, 2010 - 8:56am
I’d love to shoot tethered but so far Olympus hasn’t opened up their tool kit to Apple. I keep hoping OnOne’s iPhone app will be supported as well.
I can hope, can’t I?
on April 25, 2010 - 5:16pm
Just tried shooting tethered with my Canon EOS 400D using the EOS Utility and the Aperture Hot Folder Script. New photos took about 15 seconds to appear on the screen. Seems to be way to slow to be useful.
Will just have to hope Apple and Canon can work out whatever is necessary to enable direct support from within Aperture.
on April 28, 2010 - 5:54am
I have done it in the past with the D700. I too found it extremely slow. I can only foresee myself using this feature if doing product shots where a client isn’t waiting to see results. I have been told if I were to shoot JPEG it would be quicker and the wait is the data transfer rate of the USB. I seem to recall hearing that the camera still has a usb 1 port, but I didn’t bother to verify this information before writing this.
on May 3, 2010 - 6:00pm
I often shoot tethered with my Nikon D300. Mostly Food in studio. The time to get An image up on the screen is a little long but it makes me slow down which is also a good thing. Would obviously love to be able to shoot wirelessly but tethered shooting in Aperture works perfectly for me
on May 9, 2010 - 5:13am
I used to live by Aperture 2 using a lowly RebelXT tethered and still genuinely love version 3.0.3
However it lacks support for 5DMKII tethered and to me that is simply vital to my work.
I’ve tried every solution known and simply put, they all are no good. Not even the hot folder automator.
For now I’ve bought Capture One 5 Pro and it’s flawless for my work.
If Apple ever gets support for the 5DMKII I just may go back.
For those cameras that are supported, I can vouch that Aperture is great and fast.
on September 22, 2010 - 10:28am
I use a Canon 50d and shoot tethered on location and in my studio. I LOVE it!!!!!! So much better than trying to see the images my tiny screen when I can see it on my HUGE apple display.
Any ideas on how to do it wirelessly?? What about tether to my iPad??? Suggestions???
on September 22, 2010 - 10:36am
Ernie,
There is a long article on this site about wireless tethering. Scan the titles of the older entries on the list on the lower left of this screen.
To my knowledge there’s no way to tether live to an iPad yet. Sounds like a great idea though doesn’t it? ;)
@PhotoJoseph
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