How fast is tethered shooting on a Windows PC?

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.

A lot of the time taken up is in Lightroom which I have not tried so far, I’m still using Adobe Bridge to view my JPG and RAW (NEF) files.  That’s why I did a version of my tethered shooting script that is optimized for Bridge – which is to say it sends a keypress to bridge to advance to the most recent frame.

Testing with my configuration showed that the total time of camera-to-bridge was averaging slightly less than 3 seconds.  I did these tests with my D40 shooting raw – so that’s a 5mb file, via a USB2 hub connected to a fast but rather old Dell PC.  I’ll try it again later with the D300 which has the larger files to see how much difference there is; not a lot I suspect based on previous un-timed test.

In Terry’s tests the CCP2 import under Windows took 3.2 seconds, which is similar to my script, but then the import into Lightroom took 8 seconds – I believe Bridge is showing images much faster.  Of course the intial view it gives you is a preview but it’s normally less than a second for it to render a high quality view.

Does all this make much difference?  Not if you are doing product shots I think, but if you are shooting models then shaving seconds off each shot would be good I think.

Conclusion?  If speed is important shoot into a temp folder and use Bridge to view as you go, then import later when you are done.

PS: Still need to upload my Tethered Remote Bridge script — aka the self-portrait script!

It’s built in, oops. Remote WIA Picture Taking

Well so much for my expensive remote control script for the D300 — yes it does work, but my script is entirely redundant as the same feature is actually built in to the Windows XP Camera and Scanner Wizard!  You know the one, described here.  It’s how most people get their digital images into their PC , even while those of us who “know better” use Adobe Bridge, or a card reader.

In fact the Wizard has advantages; as a built in part of Windows it is even better as it gives you a immediate thumbnail of the image as soon as you take it.

All you have to do is connect your PTP capable camera and when the wizard pops up you advance to the step where you can see thumbnails.  Now down below them is a row of icons for rotate left right and so on.  Well the last one in the line is “Take Picture”!

Click that and my trusty Nikon D300 instantly takes a picture, and moments later the thumbnail appears in the usual space.

It works great — and the financial breakdown is still the same as with my script, so it is either the most expensive or the cheapest wireless dslr shutter release in the world.

But is it good *enough*?  Thumbnails are great but a bigger view would be even better.   And by combining my remote shutter release script with the Tethered shooting / Adobe Bridge script that should be my next step.

Stay tuned!

Coming soon – the world’s most expensive DSLR remote control

Yes, to go with my expensive D300 — I now find I have no wireless remote control shutter release.  The handly little not-particularly-cheap ML-L3 remote that worked for my D40 is no good for the D300.

Instead I’m supposed to buy an ML-3 remote — which costs about ten times the price.  Sure it does a lot more, but I don’t particularly want more, I just want to press a button in my hand while the camera is on a tripod at the other side of the room as I do endless self-portraits while practicing my off-camera lighting.

So, what is a geek to do?  Well, build something yourself of course — with the techniques in mind that I used for the Tethered Shooting script I realized I could put together a wireless remote with things I had hanging around.

Now if I add up the cost of all those items it comes to about 25 times the cost of the ML-3, so that would have to count as the most expensive dSLR wireless remote control in the world!   But…  If I already have all the gear then the extra cost to me is zero.

So once again it’s a bit (ok a lot) of hardware tied together with a few lines of code – Windows only (XP SP2 minimum) in the version I’m doing, but I’m sure Macs can do something very similar.

Details tomorrow when I get it all packaged up.