25
Options for Shooting Tethered into Lightroom
First off, a BIG thanks to everyone who posted “good lucks” on the Philly half marathon I ran this past weekend. I ran with my brother and sister and we ran the whole race together (and had a great time doing it). Weather was cold but I felt absolutely great once we got going. Anyway, thanks again!
Now onto the topic of the day. A few things have changed lately when it comes to shooting tethered into Lightroom. So I figured I’d cover them all in one post. Also, I’m not doing a full tutorial on shooting tethered mainly because that’s been done a few times already. Here’s a link to Scott Kelby’s blog where he’s got a tutorial on shooting tethered into Lightroom. Sound good? OK, here’s your options:
1) If you shoot Canon then you can use Canon’s free EOS Utility. This is probably your best option if you’re a Canon shooter.
2) If you’re a Nikon shooter the waters are a bit murky here. First, you can use Nikon’s (NOT FREE) Camera Control Pro (which is what I’ve used).
3) If you’re a Nikon shooter then you also have a free option but it’s only for Windows users only. It’s called DiyPhotoBits.com Camera Control and they’ve got a video on their site on how to use it.
4) Finally, Tom Hogarty (Lightroom’s Product Manager) let me in on a plug-in for Lightroom 2 (for Mac only though). It’s called MountainStorm Lightroom Tether and you can grab it here. Of course if you find it useful, it’s nice to leave a donation considering your other alternatives are not free. I’ve tested it out and I have to say it works pretty darn good. I’ve used Camera Control Pro for so long so it’s a little weird to change, but I think I’m now switching over to the free plug-in.
(edit: Sorry everyone. I forgot to mention one small thing that I was reminded of in the comments. Some one had told me not to use the “Enhanced” setting so make sure you leave it unchecked. Seems pretty unstable in this mode)
So as you can see here, the world of shooting tethered is still a bit confusing, with a few different options. The best solution would be for Adobe to build tethered shooting support directly into Lightroom (like Aperture does). That’s not a groundbreaking request though, and I think the Adobe folks hear it loud and clear so let’s keep our fingers crossed for the future. One more thing. If you’ve got experience with any of the tethered shooting options above be sure to let us know which works best for you (or not) in the comments area. Thanks!
No Comments to “Options for Shooting Tethered into Lightroom”
Leave a comment
Lightroom Killer Tips
Get your weekly dose of the coolest Adobe® Lightroom® tutorials, tips, time-saving shortcuts, photographic inspiration, and undocumented tricks with Matt Kloskowski from Kelby Media Sites
I use a Workflow made with Automator.
It’s not a complete tethering solution because it’s not possible to control the camera adjustments from the computer but it works fine with my Nikon D80, Mac with Leopard and Lightroom.
Open Automator, just double click “Take Picture” in the actions pane. By default this action will save the picture in the “Pictures” folder, so we need another action to move the picture to another folder, for that double click “Move Finder Items” in the actions pane and create a folder called for example “Tethered Pictures”. That’s it, save this as a Workflow called for example Tethering.workflow.
Open Lightroom, go to File/Auto Import/Auto Import Settings, in Watched Folder choose the “Tethered Pictures” folder, in Destination create a new folder called for example “Imported Pictures” and set Initial Previews to Standart, click OK. Go back to File/Auto Import/Enable Auto Import.
The “Tethered Pictures” folder must be an empty folder because it will be watched by the Lightroom and every file in that will be imported.
Now, every shooting time, open Tethering.workflow and Lightroom. I use Spaces to separate each one and Develop Window in the Lightroom.
Run the workflow.
Anyone else experience serious difficulties in finding the EOS Viewer Utility available for download? Canon site seems to only have the updater files. I hope I didn’t throw out that ancient CD that came w/ my camera…
I made a quick video tutorial on MountainTether with Lightroom. I hope it helps http://www.michaelwarf.com/blog/adobe-lightroom-tethering-tutorial .
Newton,
After having no luck using MountainTether with a D700, I used your Automator and had some success. However, there are a few things I can’t figure out:
1) Is there a way to stop the “Take Picture” action from actually taking the picture?
2) Is there a way to keep the action running until I tell it to stop? All is does for me is play once and then stop.
Thanks in advance for your help,
John
I’ve just finished a new version of Lightroom and Studio Tether. It should solve most the issues people have had i.e. issues with progress bars, name plates, crashes etc.
The plugin now automatically starts/stops and configures my StudioTether program which is used to provide feedback. The standard mode (the default) should work for most cameras except the modern Canons (I’m still trying to figure them out). The enhanced mode only currently works for Nikons but tells you your current shutter speed, iso, fstop and photo destination (memory card or PC). You can even click on these and change them.
I’ve also added LiveView support – although it appears to stall after a minute or so … Im working on fixing that at the moment.
Please have a go and report back to me
Rich
Thank you Matt.
And Rich, for Mountainstorm.
how much does the cpu influence load times? just loaded CCP2 and LR2.3 on my old powerbook 1.3ghz with 1.25g ram . raw image from d300 takes 17 seconds to load. how much improvement would a 2.0g macbook get me? thank you. jim/atlanta
if you shoot tethered a lot then capture 1 pro is the only way to go, it is awesome
I’ve been shooting using Breeze Systems’ DSLR Remote Pro, tethered to my Canon 20D (yep, I could do with an upgrade). I also have it set up so that it saves the image to my lightroom “watched” folder (see LR help for setting up autoimport). This way, when I shoot thru DSLR Remote Pro the image is also automatically imported into my lightroom library. I have the develop module opened so that I can quickly perform an edit if need be. The last shot taken appears which is very convenient. This has automated my workflow so much. I also use this system for teaching. I connect my computer to a digital data projector and can shoot directly to the screen and edit. If you know the size of the LCD on a Canon Eos 20D then you’ll understand my need for this. Obviously, this system is impractical for anything other than fixed location shooting but that’s exactly when this set up shines.
I’ve also just bought 2×5m active extension usb cables to give me more room around the classroom but I would welcome any links or suggestions to a wireless transfer from camera to pc.
I found a way to not only shoot tethered with a Nikon and a Mac but also to directly import the images over the network to Lightroom on another Mac using Automator folder action:
http://phototechstuff.johnklijnen.com/2009/10/howto-import-images-into-lightroom-from.html
So if you work in the studio with a laptop and want to see the images imported into your Lightroom database on your desktopcomputer based in the office, this works like a charm and it makes you look very Pro!!
Hope this helps.
Everything is fine except that stupid import dialog box popping up in LR for every single photo I take. I don’t see anything to turn that off. I turned off the option to automatically import when a card is inserted but that was the closest thing I could find. HELP!
I too have recently written an article on how to tethered shoot with Lightroom and my Canon 40D, as I needed to do it for an upcoming job.
Original article is here :http://www.11thstudio.com/blogs/all-posts/tethered-shooting-with-lightroom-and-canon-40d/
Hope that helps someone!
Thanks,
Chris
Just Google MountainStorm Lightroom Tether and the site will come up. The link provided is not good.
Is LR3 going to have a built in option for shooting in tether mode? We really need it in this version.
Give Sofortbild a try. Works pretty good and faster than Mountain Storm.