Tethered shooting with Lightroom

[Ben H]

Hi guys,

Ok, I'm sorting out a tethered shooting setup. It's working fine, with one minor drawback. I'll explain:-

I'm using a Canon EOS-450D, with Canon's EOS Utility for remote shooting. This has a preview window, but the image is not colour managed and the window looks a little "cheap", so I have the preview window closed.

When I take a shot, the EOS Utility retrieves the image from the camera, and saves it to a folder I specify.

Then I have Lightroom 2 watching that folder and auto-importing the image - Lightroom's image display is *much* nicer. While the overall shot-to-screen time is not very fast (takes about 9 seconds with RAW files) it's fine for my budget.

Ok.

So now comes the minor issue. Bear with me ;)

I'm using Lightroom 2 on a Macbook Pro, with an external (larger) monitor. I want the grid view on the MBP screen (call it monitor 1), with the full screen image on the second larger monitor (monitor 2) so that both myself and the client can see the shots as they come in.

Ok. If I put LR's main window on monitor 2, switch that to full screen loupe view, and open a grid on the other monitor, it works as expected - auto-imported images are selected by default, so when a new image comes into LR, it will be displayed in full on the large monitor.

But this means LR's main window has to be on the larger monitor. And I would like it the other way around (as the MBP is closer to me while shooting). And if I rig it up this way - LR's main window on monitor 1 switched to grid view, with monitor 2 a full screen loupe view - when a new image comes into LR, it is *not* selected by default - this means new images do not show up on the big monitor - it stays showing the last selected image.

So in short: if loupe view is in the main window, it automatically shows the newly imported pic. If loupe view is in the secondary window, it does not switch to the newly imported pic.

Now either I've missed some auto-update setting somewhere, or it's a quirk of LR - has anybody run into this, or have a solution? I'm going to keep fiddling, it's just a bit annoying when the main window will auto-update, but the second monitor window will not.

Sorry for the long-winded question!

[Ben H]

Well, I've got an acceptable workaround I think. The loupe view will only update for new pictures when it's the main window loupe view - if you just have the loupe view open on the second window, it will not update.

So, I just have the loupe view in the main LR window on the MBP, *and* the loupe view on the large monitor. This means both update as new shots come in, so both myself, and the client/model can keep an eye on the shots, which is all I want ;)

Lightroom really is a fantastic piece of software, though...

[PKMax]

Ooh, I've just been reading up on tethered shooting with lightroom elsewhere and noticed this thread. I've been thinking about trying to get this setup with my Nikon D50, I've not had chance to play with it yet, but from what I understand i have to set the camera to some PTP mode or something for it to work. I'm assuming you just connect the camera via a USB cable? an extra long one if possible lol. It would be nice to get a larger preview of a photo after I've taken it because quite often I take a picture and think it's sharp, only to discover it's horrible when I open it in Lightroom.

I'll keep in mind the workaround you suggest too when playing with it.

are there any kind of wireless devices to do this too? or does the Camera have to natively support this option?

[Ben H]

Yep. I have a USB extension cable or two, which is handy (dragging your laptop of a table onto the floor is *not* fun ;)

Basically, you use the software that comes with your camera - check to se if it has a remote shooting mode.

Dunno about Nikons - for my Cannon, I simply turn the camera on while connected via USB, and run the camera software and select "Remote Shooting" - there's no special mode you have to put the camera in or anything like that. YMMV of course.

Then all that happens is when you take a shot, it's beamed to the computer, rather than saved onto the memory card, and can then be displayed on your monitors.

[PKMax]

ok, finally got this working..

If anyone is interested in getting it working with a Nikon, and not interested in spending $160 on Nikon Capture to help you do this lol, then I have the answer!!! heh.

first of all I discovered there were some dodgy scripts you could run which would monitor the Nikon and copy files over when they were taken, but this doesn't work on Vista (and I'm running Vista Doh).

so, I wrote the program myself, It can monitor the Nikon for photos taken and copy them to a specific folder on your machine which lightroom can monitor.

however, on vista it doesn't allow you to copy the NEF, so you have to enable that NEF+Jpg option on the camera (as well as setting USB mode to PTP)

so the application only copies the Jpeg over, which if your using this just to get a bigger preview of the image then this is more than perfect, you can copy the NEFs over later to play with.

I'm planning on changing it so that It can preview the file itself too, cause seems like it might be a waste if all i'm using it for is a quick preview in lightroom before the real import.

ooh, and it's also got a "Take Picture" button, which means you can sit at your pc clicking Take Pic and hearing your camera go click over the other side of the room, and then get the pic on the pc :)

I'm easily pleased hehe.

I only wrote this in a few hours tonight, so if it has "issues" then sorry heh.
http://loligo.co.uk/nikontether.rar

it currently requires the .net 3.5 runtimes, cause that's just what I have installed to develop on at the moment. if it's a problem I can recompile for an earlier version.

Please bear in mind it was thrown together quickly tonight, and it's a bit "Rough" lol, ie, you can't specify the directory the files are copied too yet, it copies them to "C:\Tethered_out"
I'll make it nicer over time :) but thought someone might appreciate it :)