Ok so here is DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.0 — the Embarrassment release. I’ve named it that because I’ve had no time to work on it recently and so it still is a) very rough with major holes and b) fails to have all the obvious fixes and enhancements that I have discussed with people.
So why release it at all? Well because having control of the camera exposure from the computer is cool — and at the moment I have it sitting here on my PC working and maybe you’d like to have it on your PC working as well.
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.
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.
Update: This is now obsolete for two reasons, firstly remote is built into windows, and secondly for advance use you have the DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 1.0 application.
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 bigphotography 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).
