D300 – Tethered as well

Well I’ve been a bit busy the last week and a bit, and what little “photo time” I have has been occupied with playing with my new toy the Nikon D300.  It was a gift to me and I’m really appreciating it very much.  It is a lot of camera when compared with my D40 and I really now understand what I read before about for people upgrading D40 -> D300.  Because it is a “class well above your current camera” you will need to “step up your game photographically if you want to get the benefits of those extra pixels. And there’s an enormous amount of controls to master to do that

In a sense I am no way near there — I wasn’t even near there with my D40 though I did feel a little frustration at its limits.  But as always it is the photographer, not the camera, that is the critical component and I want to spend more time on that aspect.

Still, as a geek I’ll never turn down, or fail to appreciate the fun, in a new gadget.

Pro:

  • Finally auto-focus for my 50mm f1/8 lens!
  • Better high ISO, it is not miraculous, but it is better
  • ISO 100 — so called “Lo”
  • Built in CLS commander, so I can free up my SB-800 and effectively get another off-camera flash
  • It works fine with my tethered shooting script.  🙂

Con:

  • It’s heavy – really, I don’t want to carry this about in my bag all the time
  • RAW files are so big — oh no, do I need another hard disk already?
  • It uses CF cards — when I have a big collection of SD 🙁

And the absolutely biggest issue:

  • I can no longer blame my terrible photographs on having inadaquate equipment.  😉

Ok I’ll stop playing soon and get back to doing something constructive.  Next up on my list “The World’s Most Expensive D300 Remote Shutter Release”.  Details to follow (if it works!)

Free Tethered Shooting Script for Nikon

Update: This version is now obsolete,

download latest from here .

Update: The With Bridge version provides almost instant image viewing in Adobe Bridge without any keypresses.  If you use Bridge instead of Adobe Lightroom then download that version.  I’ve also made a video to show how to use this script.

If you’ve been keeping up with the blogs of various big photography bloggers out there you’ll certainly have been seeing quite a bit about tethered shooting recently. Not that it is a revolution or anything, but it certainly is a help to be able to see your images immediately on a big screen — and that doesn’t just go for those with failing eye-sight but basically the images you see on the LCD at the back of your camera are only the jpg preview, not the RAW (should you be shooting raw).

Even if you are shooting jpg just having to view them on such a tiny screen really makes it hard to tell if they are sharp or perhaps shaded as you are hoping. Sucking them right into your PC seems just so logical.

If you are a Canon shooter then no issue – the software comes with the camera (so I’m told).

If you are a Nikon shooter then it gets a little more difficult. If you are a Mac user you could use Aperture, but for Windows you seem to be stuck with Nikon Camera Control Pro. That’s a $160 or so software which does a lot more than just tethered shooting, but is probably overkill if like me you are a hobbiest just messing around.

So in true geeky DIY mode I thought it can’t be that hard to write a script that sucks pictures out of a USB connected camera and saves them onto the PC. And after a little poking around I find that actually it’s true, it isn’t that hard.

The thing that makes it practical is that most of what you need is built into Windows, another chunk comes as a standard optional microsoft download, such that the glue you need to pull it all together is just a few lines of code.

Part 1 is Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) – that’s built in

Part 2 is WIA Automation Layer

– a free download from Microsoft for Windows XP SP2 or higher

Part 3 is a script to tie it all together – which I present here

DOWNLOAD

This is now obsolete, use instead the free DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 4.0

application.

Requirements:

  • Windows XP SP2 or higher
  • A Nikon DSLR (D40, D60, D200 and D300 tested ok)
  • USB cable

Installation:

Well nothing really, just unzip it and put it in a folder anywhere — I suggest c:\program files\tethered but anywhere would do.

Usage:

  1. Empty your camera card — that’s optional but a good start for reasons that will be apparent later
  2. Plug your camera in via USB — you should make sure USB in your menus is set to PTP
  3. If your PC pops up one of those windows wanting to download stuff, just cancle it
  4. Run “tethered.cmd” by double clicking on it
  5. Open your image viewer of choice – I use Bridge – and set it to look in the c:\tethered folder.  If you are using Lightroom then you’d want to set that to be a watched folder.
  6. You are now ready to start shooting.  Anything you shoot will turn into a file in a folder called c:\tethered within a second of you completing the exposure
  7. When you are done just close the Tethered window.

Notes:

  • All your images are also stored on your memory card so you have a backup without using a D3 and two cards
  • If you shoot more than 1000 images in one session it is liable to give an error as the filenames wrap around.  That’s why it is good to empty your memory card first so that you are starting at file number 000.
  • I’ve tested this with a Nikon D40 and it works fine, in theory it should work with any WIA compatible camera but the other Point and Shoot ones I have refuse to take pictures while the USB cable is connected so I can’t test them.  I’d be very pleased to hear from those of you who have tried it on other cameras and if it worked or not.
  • If you want the images stored somewhere other than c:\tethered then edit the .wsf file to change the location

Welcome to DIY Photo Bits . Com

Welcome!

This is doing to be my place to drop into the internet the few bits and pieces that my ever fertile imagination has come up with as tools and home grown gizmos to assist in photography.

First up is going to be the Shooting Tethered script – and then I think I’ll have a go at documenting my bamboo light stands.