Kris D'Amico Photography

January 26th, 2009 by Kris

So, I just had a associate of mine ask if there was ANYWAY to shoot tethered, you know so your images aren’t written onto your memory card, they right from the camera onto your laptop, so you can see them on screen. The answer is absolutely.

1. Connect your camera to your laptop via little USB connector cable that shipped with your camera (they do sell longer cables online if you need more room to maneuver). Now put the other end into you laptop’s USB port.
2. Now, you’ll need some software to talk to the camera and Lightroom. If you’re shooting Canon, it shipped with the camera – “Canon EOS Utility” you can also download it here. You Nikon shooters will need Camera Control Pro 2 (B&H caries and so does Wolfe Camera) but they do offer a 30 day trial at Nikon’s site.
3. Now you’ll need to make a folder on your computer somewhere, I put mine on the desktop. Name it something like “watched” or “capture” so you’ll know what it is.
4. Now that camera and laptop are connected, turn the camera on and launch the EOS viewer or Camera Control. Canon users there’s a bug with the 5d and Mac OS X that you’ll need to have an image up on the viewfinder, just shoot the floor and press play, we’ll get to that in a second!! When the dialog appears, Nikon users click the Choose button and find the “Watched Folder” and choose it. Canon users, choose the “Camera Settings/ Remote Shooting” Menu item, this fun little window will come up:
5. Now press the “play” button to clear it and the software is happy! Under preferences use the pull down menu and go to “Destination Folder” and choose the “Watched Folder” and hit ok. That’s all you’ll need to do with the capture software.
6. To Lightroom we go!! Under Lightroom’s File menu, you’ll see Auto Import, under Auto Import you’ll want to click “Enable Auto Import.” Not rocket science yet, right? Now choose the Auto Import Settings. You’ll see something like this…
7. See the “Watched Folder” up top? Choose that “Watched Folder” From before. Now any file that the capture software puts in that folder will automatically imported into Lightroom (and there was much rejoicing!!). The rest is pretty standard, sub directory where theses pics will go, file name, keywords, etc.

And there we go. I selected the folder in Lightroom and switch to grid view, then double click on the first pic (you know the drill), so you’re seeing the image “fit” the screen and shoot till you fingers bleed!!

Hope that helps!

One thing to note, this is not a FAST way of shooting!! You’ll need to be paitent and wait for things to transfer. Just to let you know!!