OS X tethered shooting

JonathanRyan

JonathanRyan

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So, either Nikon or Adobe broke tethered shooting in Lightroom for Macs.

I upgraded my Macbook to El Cap recently (highest OS X it will take) and discovered to my "delight" that LR5 will no longer tether because somebody broke it. So, d/led a trial of LR 6 and upgraded to the latest version. Tethering just barely works. It's awfully slow, has no real feedback (there's no "transferring" indicator) and periodically just disconnects. It's like Adobe rewrote the drivers even worse than Nikon had written them in the first place.

I'm now trying to revert to Mavericks (which will give me a few other issues but I'll get by).

Any other ideas? Because I genuinely might have to put Windows 10 on my Macbook if they can't sort this out.

I need to shoot a D800 tethered to a Macbook reliably. And I need to get this sorted by Wednesday.
 
gremlin16 said:
Did you try it without your flash cards in? Or with empty cards?
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When tethered, Nikons detect it and will not attempt to
write on them what ever their presence and conditions.
 
gremlin16 said:
Worth trying.
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Right… looking for all possible solution is wise.
In my case, I never had to pay attention to that
since the whole system purrs like a happy cat!
 
gremlin16 said:
Yes Daniel,i agree. But, whenever I shoot tethered, if the cards are in and/or have images on them, tethering to my MBP stops or stalls. Worth trying.
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That's a good point - not tried that.

Currently also Priming some new cables in case the cable that has worked for years with Mav/LR5 has coincidentally stopped working at the exact same time as all of this.
 
Kodiak Qc said:
•


The way I see it, Jonathan, I would keep El Capitan as on
my MBP 17" and try Capture One 11… I use these plus my
iPad Air II, Capture Pilot, Profoto Studio 3 on any of my 4
Nikons bodies and I'm having a ball in studio.

See…
https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/my-new-studio.672737/
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Not the first time I've considered C1.....

Looks like ti would cost me about €350 or €25 a month compared to £9.98 a month for CC.

Main issue is I'd have to learn it. ATM my "live" workflow is to shoot tethered and then allow each person to see their images and select one. I need to know the interface well enough to (a) stop them doing stupid stuff and (b) get them out of trouble such as when they accidentally hit 100% zoom............

If the cables don't save me then this is next try.

BTW, Sofortbild still exists! And it looks quite nice. It has the cool feature that you can shoot to hard drive AND card at once (yes, on a Nikon). But it is still sluggish and disconnects. I really hope it's the cables.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Looks like ti would cost me about €350 or €25 a month
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I think that all my students could not go for these prices,
maybe you should check that again… I just did!
 
JonathanRyan said:
Single user pro edition (which I believe Nikon users need) $299 / €279
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Right, but, as a registered user, updates are free
and version upgrades are at half pice or less.
 
OK, so here are my findings after a lot of fiddling.

1. You can't shoot a Nikon tethered to LR5 under El Cap (although see below)
2. You also can't easily drop back to Mavericks (the Mavericks installer is available but won't run under El Cap. Yes, that's terrible coding by Apple.)
3. My cable was actually to blame for the poor performance of LR6 - there is too much play at the plug where it meets the D800 body - that's a decent quality Lindy cable. Even a new cable isn't great but another really short USB3 fits the Nikon socket really nicely and works great with an extender.
4. Sofortbild works pretty well under El Cap but sadly doesn't natively support LR. What you can do is leave SF running as the tether s/w and set it to write to a folder watched by LR5's autoimport. This will allow you to carry on using the s/w you paid for AND write it to the internal card as well. (Or it should do - I can't get this feature to work reliably.)
5. Using SF like this is considerably slower than LR6. I counted about 6s for an image to pop up in LR 6 from shutter fall. Via SF and LR5 it was more like 9.

So....cheapest option is 4. But I'll use LR6 for the next couple of weeks and see if I like it enough to rent it. Then I'll get the trial of C1 and see if I can get used to that :D
 
JonathanRyan said:
Then I'll get the trial of C1 and see if I can get used to that
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All my students did, buddy, and (at this point)
none is thinking of going in another direction! :cool:
 
I have used C1 to shoot tethered with Phase and Nikon cameras for years. It is by far the most reliable way I have found and I would not consider using anything else at this point. I would give the trial a go, there are lots of good webinars on the Phase one youtube channel that can be helpful.
 
Tbant said:
I have used C1 to shoot tethered with Phase and Nikon cameras for years. It is by far the most reliable way I have found and I would not consider using anything else at this point.
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I DID NOT SAY THAT!

Pleased to meet you Tim! :cool:
 
My new Lindy cable will not work on my D810 using LR CC on Sierra. Never had an issues with older cameras using USB2 but USB3 seems much more picky about cables. If I swamp the cable it all works without issue.
 
Kaolin said:
My new Lindy cable will not work on my D810 using LR CC on Sierra. Never had an issues with older cameras using USB2 but USB3 seems much more picky about cables. If I swamp the cable it all works without issue.
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I've found jiggling it helps :)

I think the issue is that the D800/810 has quite a short USB socket. Lots of cables with fractionally long plugs stand out of the socket and so can move around. Moving around is a very bad thing with the amount of data a D800 chucks down a wire as fast as USB3. The cable I have that works the best seems to have a shorter plug so the body of it sits against the body of the camera and can't move. Typically this cable is about 8 inches long......

If the socket wasn't in such an awkward place I'd probably think about gluing a cable in. Maybe some of that Sugru would help.
 
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