This is not mine and I haven’t tried it but I appreciate the nice simple approach, perhaps because it is like mine, of a script wrapper around some standard functionality.
See this post where appollux explains the scripting necessary to get tethered shooting working on Linux, or probably any similiar *nix system.
It really makes me want to go ahead and implement some more interesting features now that the basics are taken care of for most people. But first I really have to do that bamboo monopole — I suffer from terrible handshake it seems.
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.
Also called the “Tethered Remote Bridge” script this addition to my scripting library lets me remotely release the shutter on my D300 or D40, while tethered via USB to my Windows PC. Then the image is downloaded and displayed in Adobe Bridge within 3-4 seconds.
I was thinking about this after reading Terry White’s post about the topic, though he is more interested in Mac vs PC (or Mac vs Windows really). Interestingly he was able to do a Mac vs Windows test on the same hardware which of course makes it much more valid test. The interesting conclusion is that the Camera-to-Lightroom total speed is almost identical, though the download vs import speed varies a lot.
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).
