Tether your Camera

[jellotranz]

One thing that many photographers overlook when doing more complicated setups is tethering your camera to your computer. Now normally I am not a studio photographer, but I do occasionally have to do it. When I end up doing studio shots I am usually shooting portraits at various theme parties. This means that I need to be sure that not only the persons face is lit correctly but I also need to take particular care in lighting their costumes as that is why they are getting photographed.



When I do these, be it right or wrong, I generally end up with a fairly complicated flash setup. Generally I will run at least 4 or so flash heads and usually an additional one overhead to light the hair. In cases like this while a light meter is helpful (FYI I don’t own one) after all is said and done, personally I need to see the image and check all the areas of the costume and the LCD panel isn’t going to cut it.



So I plug in my camera to my laptop. Once I take the picture it is then immediately sent to the computer screen and displayed full screen. This allows me to quickly check the image without playing around with removing the memory card and plugging it into the computer.



This method is also very useful for other kinds of photography including Smoke Photography, Macro photography, Stop Motion photography (Very fun to do!!) and HDR. In fact the remote control software I use on my PC to control my camera will let me do an automatic bracket of up to 21 images which really makes for some interesting HDR photo’s if you don’t mind waiting forever for the 21 images to process.



So if your camera supports tethering your camera to your computer, give it a try…

[Greg_Nuspel]

It was also nice for you to share your family portraits while explaining this

[jellotranz]

Pretty Hot family huh... lol Actually Having Vampires in the family is a bit troublesome when it comes to family gatherings.. We always end up with a few members missing...

[tirediron]

Agreed; I use tethered shooting (Nikon Camera Control Pro) for a lot of macro work and it's excellent for checking focus and fine-tuning DoF.

[jellotranz]

Agreed; I use tethered shooting (Nikon Camera Control Pro) for a lot of macro work and it's excellent for checking focus and fine-tuning DoF.

I have done very little Macro work but I can imagine that it would make it alot easier to check DOF as I know the LCD monitor on my Canon is way too small for me to tell much of anything about the photo.

[Ben H]

Yep - I love shooting like this. I have a laptop tethered, and a large monitor. I shoot, the pictures go directly into Lightroom, and appear both on the laptop, and nicely full screen on the large monitor so people can see what's happening.

Very cool - I just wish that the pictures would transfer instantly rather than lagging 7-10 seconds...

It's a nice way to work though, apart from having a cable hanging from the camera...

[Marko]

Thanks jello for posting this and really fun shots!

Question - can you elaborate a bit for newbies that haven't done this.
- What software do you need to do this?
- What wires do you need to do this

many thanks!

[Ben H]

Canon cameras come with all the software you need - the EOS Utility lets you remote control the camera and shoot tethered, and it brings up the image in a new window. However, it doesn't look particularly good, so instead I get the EOS utility to save the images to a specific folder.

I then set up Lightroom so it watches that folder and automatically imports any images placed in there. It works really well and Lightroom handles multiple monitors really well so you can set up whatever display configuration you need.

So: you press the shutter on the camera, the camera squirts the picture to the computer (it can also optionally still save to the card as well for backup), the EOS utility receives the picture and saves it to a folder, and Lightroom picks up that image and imports it into my library, displaying on the monitor in a nice sexy fullscreen view.

[tirediron]

Canon cameras come with all the software you need -... <snipped>

Nikon on the other hand doesn't! Camera Control Pro (which works almost exactly the same as it's Canon equivalent) will run you about $250. The only cable required is a standard mini-USB cable.