Lightroom Tips

Tethered Shooting Options with Lightroom Update

Hey there my fine tethered friends (that was such a bad joke – sorry). I wanted to give you guys a quick update on tethered shooting options for Lightroom. As usual, there’s a few different options and most of them are for Nikon shooters. If you’re wondering why, its because Canon DSLRs come with a free program that takes care of tethered shooting.

1) Canon EOS Utility (Mac/PC, $Free, Canon only) – This is the program if you’re shooting Canon. You use it to tether your camera to your computer and transfer files into a folder that you set up. Then you set that folder as a watched folder for Lightroom to automatically import from.

2) Nikon Capture Control Pro (Mac/PC, $150+) – If you’re a Nikon shooter then this is probably the most stable option. Its from Nikon and works great when you set it up with Lightroom. It’ll run you at least $150 but if you’re doing this for a living you’ll make that money back pretty quick.

3) Sofortbild (Mac only, Nikon only, Free) – This one is a newcomer to the market and looks really good. I haven’t personally tested it out but Scott Kelby has and is incorporating it into his next Lightroom seminar so I’ll probably do the same. Speaking of Lightroom seminars, I just happen to be teaching one in Chicago on July 20th and New York on July 22nd. I’m just sayin’ 🙂

4) Mountainstorm Studio & Lightroom Tether (Mac only, Free, Nikon only) – I’ve had pretty decent luck with this one. Plus, it supports Live View which is kinda cool. They have a very easy-to-follow manual and you can get a good idea of how it works from reading it (takes about 2 minutes to read).

5) There’s is another free option for Nikon (only tested on some cameras) but it’s only for Windows users. It’s called DiyPhotoBits.com Camera Control 4. Here’s the link. Interesting side-note: There also appears to be a script for viewing in Bridge as well.

So while the Lightroom/Tethered party isn’t a fun one yet it definitely looks like things are getting better. Software developers seem to recognize the need for tethered shooting and are coming out with new versions of their software to help out. Should be interesting to see where it goes in the future.

One more thing. If you’ve got experience with any of the above-mentioned products then let us know in the comments. It think it helps others out as they’re trying to figure out which software will work best for them. Thanks!

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