Two of my scripts let you press a key on the keyboard, or click with the mouse, and remotely release the shutter. But just like the built in Windows Explorer technique for doing these they both only are able to trigger JPG, even if the camera is set to RAW.
Until today. It turns out this is not that hard to fix. But the programatic technique is a bit of a laugh; because Windows Image Automation does not officially support RAW the NEF files on my Nikon D300 are typed as being of “undefined” type. Unlike JPG files which WIA does know are JPG files and are typed appropriately.
This one is not mine! But wow, that’s a great hack. It’s remote camera control — not tethered viewing — of a Nikon or Canon DSLR using a Nintendo DS. Check out the details here. A very impressive piece of work. [Via zedomax.com and hackszine.com]
Why? Obviously YouTube is compressing it more and making for a fuzzier image. But they CAN do higher quality, so don’t they? Well it turns out that YouTube can serve you up a better quality video — they just don’t by default.
I explained before how my remote shutter release script was actually redundant, because Windows has a built in feature that does this. Of course I did then go forward and make the self-portrait script which does do something more useful, remote shutter release combined with immediate download and viewing, but the original idea of a simple remote shutter is still useful.
So I thought a better explanation of how that Windows feature works might help, and it’s good practice for me making videos as well:
A lot of people ask and I don’t know — it probably does work as it is using a standard Windows way of talking to the camera — WIA — but I don’t have the hardware to test it.
If a camera supports a “PTP” or “MTP” mode — and if when plugged into a PC it is visible in My Computer under the section for Scanners and Cameras (not as a removable disk drive) then it is liable to work. The only big gotcha I can see is that some cameras — all the P&S I’ve tried — will not let me press the shutter button while they are plugged into the PC. It seems that ability is a DSLR thing.
Since I first posted my free script that allows Nikon DSLRs to be shot tethered I’ve been very pleased with the response, it seems to have been helpful to many people. However I’ve hardly been very good at documenting how to use it. So in an attempt to fix that I’ve made this little video which shows how to use it.
This is my first video attempt so it is pretty basic — but it took me all afternoon to put together, so please excuse the rough edges. Hopefully I’ll work out how to do this better and perhaps make some videos explaining my hardware DIY projects which would also benefit from this type of explanation.
