The first thing to point out about tethering in general is that it does not necessarily involve a cable, with the new Nikon D4 operating on a WIFI tether through its built-in web server and full control at the one extreme, and at the other the wireless capture possible through the Canon battery Grp or the Eye-Fi memory card. For most purposes however the wired tether remains the only really practicable option, and is usually significantly faster than any WiFi options

A regenerating USB cable is required for mobility

So the first thing one needs is a USB cable, swiftly followed by a USB regenerating extension cable, such as the one shown which I bought from eBay 3 years ago. One needs the regenerating extender because without that the maximum length one can use is 15′ (5m). Next useful and slightly non-standard bit of kit in the low profile USB cable one wants to fit in under one’s ‘L’ bracket it’s described as “USB A male to up angled mini B male” (or vice versa) the up angled mini B takes the cable in at right angles through the gap in my bracket rather than interfering with the portrait mounting ‘L’ plate.  Quick Tip: fold your long cable rather than coiling it up.  That way you avoid introducing a twist to it and will not have to unkink it.  Hook and lop cable ties are very useful for keeping things tidy.

Velcro Cable ties the cheaper alternative

Many people will have seen Frank Doorhof or Scott Kelby demonstrating the wonderful “Tether Tools” kit for holding the laptop and the cable snags to stop the USB plug being wrenched from & damaging one’s camera, and some discussion on preventing the USB cable coming apart. I think that one would be wise leaving the cable to be pulled apart, as that avoids trips and things being pulled over. It is desirable to have cable snags at computer and camera to protect those vulnerable ports, but have a relatively loose couple in the middle, that will pull apart when someone falls over it. This will have the disadvantage that you will have to set up the communications again, but that is a small price for not pulling over your tripod and camera, and dragging the laptop off it’s work surface.

Allow the cable to come apart if someone trips on it

The USB cable isn’t everything of course, one needs some software to drive the connexion. Canon cameras come with an extensive remote control suite, whereas for Nikon it’s an additional package such as the seriously expensive Capture NX2. Lightroom has a built in remote capability which addresses this to a certain extent but the control available is frankly poor, the trigger function is there, but that’s all, there is no access to even the simple exposure controls beyond displaying what is currently set. Where the Lightroon tethering really wins is for use by a Photographer who is using the camera hands-on, and does not need to make semi-remote adjustments. Like all tethering software the system responds to manual triggering and copies the image back to the laptop from the camera whenever the shutter is pressed.

Where more control is needed I’ve found On One’s Software’s DSLR Camera Remote HD for the iPad to be the most useful complete remote triggering package, as it addresses lots of the issues left open by other packages, and at reasonable cost. There is also a slightly cut down version for the iPhone, mostly what is missing is the video.  It integrates very well with Lightroom’s Watch Folder auto-import feature, but will work equally well just importing to a selected folder, again it responds to manual shutter activation, and all photos get copied to the computer.  The rest of this article will be about using DSLR Camera Remote.

NB There is a similarly named package “DSLR Remote for Mac” from Breeze software which seems to only address Canon DSLRs. I have no experience with this package, so cannot commend it, please don’t confuse them.

Server panel for DSLR Remote

Images are imported into the top folder and once imported linked into the Lightroom watch folder

In operation one starts a server package on the laptop. This handles communication – it will set the camera iso/aperture/shutter/white balance copy the captured images back to the computer, and move them into a “Watch Folder” if required in an atomic operation to prevent partially copied files being detected and misread. It is driven by the control panel on the iDevice, and also copies the images to the iDevice for (zoomable) review.

Setting up Lightroom is equally easy, as these 2 screen captures illustrate:

Watch folder dialogue

Turn on Auto Import

A full set of remote controls

There is a real bonus, it’s not necessary to have a WiFi network in place on site, or bring along a Mi-Fi unit: an ad-hoc net between laptop and iPad is all that’s needed, so the whole thing will operate on location, even on battery in the open. I’ve used it successfully in a Village Hall, and at a fete.

The iDevice control panel for the server links with WiFi from one’s iPad or iPhone, giving full control of all the usual camera menu options, Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, and white balance, also a set of add on functions, such as choosing whether to save images to the camera’s flash card as well as the computer (a good idea), the ability to make a much wider set of exposure brackets with iso, time or aperture bracketing, not limited by the camera’s built in spread and exposure count. One also has the ability to program a time lapse sequence.

Full control needs the camera to be set in such a way as to allow that control to be exercised — if not you will be prompted to put it in Manual mode:

Programed Bracketing needs the Camera in Manual

DSLR Camera Remote HD displays the captured image on the iPad to allow one to take advantage of the much larger screen for review (and it can be zoomed for a detail view) yet still position the laptop so the client or sitter can see what’s being captured. It will also display video and live view allowing one to compose and focus a shot when it’s difficult to get behind the viewfinder. You can also save the image to the “Camera Roll” on your iDevice, for a quick retouch and share.

Auto Bracket Shutter, Aperture or ISO

My biggest use for tethered capture is for putting the camera hard against a room wall to show the space off to best advantage, and get an extended bracket to illustrate interior and exterior views simultaneously. I would really like a version that connects directly, or via another iDevice to avoid having to take a laptop on location, but when one is taking strobes to put outside in the garden to simulate a sunny day inside (this is Britain after all) the laptop is the least of one’s kit worries.

Related Posts

• Macro and short depth of field
• For want of a nail — a belated review of the TrekPod Go
• Help my menu settings keep vanishing!
• So… What is “Pro” a code for?
• Photo Selection Slideshows
• International Power
• Eye-Fi vs Shooting Tethered
• YN565 E-TTL Flash Speedlite fails with Canon ST-E2
• Another Speedlight replacement
• Seasonal Toys & Games
• Pixel Wired Off-Camera Extender
• Tethering (Continued)

AJ Wood’s issue with the tone curve has been well aired, if you haven’t seen them have a look here.  I’ve had a few more prosaic problems with my upgrade, but irritating nonetheless.

Enable Sidecar Files to save adjustments

Structured keywords in Lr3

Like many users I’m relatively paranoid about losing work, so have enabled XMP sidecar files. I have to report that Lr4 behaves extremely badly when importing from an existing Lr3 catalog if these are present.  Firstly it’s going to re-write the sidecars in the new Lr4 doctype — fair enough I guess, except this will take the tone curve destruction that AJ Wood describes and write it out, thus making sure the old adjustment is lost.  Before doing this however it will misread the keyword metadata from the XMP files.

In Lightroom 3 I had all the keywords structured — the “Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Collection” which is favoured by a number of stock libraries, my own keywords since CVKC is very North American particularly when it comes to describing the built environment, and also some plants. Author is to track easily photos I’m retouching for someone else. I also have a small hierarchy for tracking Competitions entered, & scores achieved, the final set is where I stuffed the sprawl of keywords from pulling in the example files for Matt Kloskowski‘s Compositing Secrets Book.  Basically 4 working headings, though some of the navigational categories within these are set as “don’t export” to give a better set when loaded up into the library.

After import into Lr4

After I had imported my Lr3 Catalog into Lr4 not only did my images have, as expected, their fully structured keywords (presumably directly imported from the SQLite imitation database), but also all those keywords as “loose tokens” obscuring my structured keyword hierarchy.

This is massively irritating.  Fortunately it is simply a case of tediously deleting the loose entries, and waiting ages while all the sidecar files get updated again. In my case with a 30k image library, I think this is going to take a day and a half.

Multiply this massive productivity boost by the number of people who are going to upgrade…

The other problem I’ve found is Management Disconnection I had gone with the “manage your photo-sharing” paradigm.  There are problems with this in Lr3 as the Flickr plugin has not been taught to recognise when an image has been placed in multiple sets at the Lightroom end, and handle it properly as a single image in multiple sets on upload.  Probably a windows programmer for whom the notion is alien

Anyway my export sets didn’t import with the catalogue images, so on recreating them I’m faced with a choice, to loose all links, comments, favourites and group memberships by explicitly deleting and re-uploading, or to loose dynamic management of already uploaded images, as there is no way to “reconnect” my local images with their instantiation on the sharing site.  With nearly 400 images uploaded this is a major PITA, but one that understandably will not have been exercised during the public beta.

Penalty Kick

On Saturday I had a welcome unexpected chance to go to a Harlequins home game, and saw it as a chance to try some of the ideas that I’ve been picking up from Scott Kelby’s blog though just from the stands, rather than the privileged sideline access of the professional.

Kick-off was at 17:30 a quarter hour after sunset, so this was strictly a floodlight exercise.  I quickly found that the exposure on the field of play was fairly constant, but there was huge risk of variability if one let the camera “do it’s thing”so went fully manual, f2.8, 1/800^th & ISO on H1 (12800).  The other half of this exercise was processing in LightRoom 4 beta, and the noise removal could only be better than the already good results one gets in Lr3.

Ones position becomes highly variable when sitting in a stadium seat

I had also turned on GPX Master+ on my iPhone to import my location into Lr4 and geotag the photos.  That was slightly bizarre as the track screenshot shows,  I was actually sitting under the stroke of the ‘A’.  The GeoTagging process itself was beautifully simple; when I got home i turned off track logging on the iPhone.  Before The images had finished importing into Lightroom, the track file was in the Dropbox folder on the Mac.  It was then a case of switching to the Map module and reading in the track file (which was extremely good for when one was moving)  I then selected todays photos, and under the Map > Tracklog menu set the offset between the time on the camera and the GPX track.  Finally under Maps > Tracklog clicked “Auto Tag selected photos”  It’s such a relief not having to re-read the metadata after running an external tagging program.

I had a pair of normal 8×60 binoculars with me and was struck by the huge difference with my 200mm lens — in binocular terms 4×20, it really brought home what I had been reading about the need for long fast glass for this sort of shot.  A frame filling image was only possible for relatively close play; on the other hand I have the Megapixels to crop…

Anyway for your “amusement and despair” from the ground of the Masters of the Revels here are a few shots, comments welcome

On its way	Recovered	Quins catch in line-out
Interception	High catch	Now what?
Clearance	Battering Through	The Maul

In the meantime the price of the current release has never been better.

NB if you follow the link above to buy you will be subsidising my blog.

Lightroom 4 Beta has all this functionality built in to the Maps module, which is a big win, but ideally one should still carry a GPS device, such as a Garmin eTrex and download the tracks to synchronise with the photo timestamps.  Of course there is also the track data held inside one’s iPhone, but Apple have gone out of their way to make that difficult to access.

Enter GPX Master+ which uses your Dropbox account to synchronise track files to your computer from your iOS device, ready for import into Lightroom 4 (or GPSPhotoLinker) and just makes life that little bit easier.  Usual caveats about Battery drain apply — you have about 1 hour, but if like me you have a car charger this is unlikely to be an issue.  For all-day use the Garmin E-Trex is still the way to go.

Related Posts

• First iPad App to Buy?
• GPX Master+ GEO Tagging made easier

Pixel VM-801 and 3 x VS-801

Rear switch on the VM-801

I’m becoming quite a fan of Pixel’s after-market accessories. Today I’ld like to tell you about the PF-801 hotshoe extender (1xVM-801 and 1xVS-801). The VM-801 camera end sits in the hotshoe, and has 3 RJ-45 ports. RJ-45 is the standard cable for connecting up computer networks, available in many pre-formed lengths, or those with the tools can make up whatever length they need. For this application one wants “straight” network cables as opposed to cross-overs.

Checking the extender

The 3 ports are labeled A, B & C– these labels have nothing to do with the Canon Wireless Flash groups, but simply give you a reference as to which port is which, and relates to the rear switch.

On my unit the first thing I did was get out a continuity tester to check what was going on. The central spot on all the remotes is connected through to the hotshoe, via a switch for each port, which acts to enable or isolate the corresponding flash. The rear switch directs the other 4 hotshoe contacts through either the A or C ports, thus allowing the flash on that port to be controlled by the camera, when set to B I get a screen saying the flash is incompatible with the Camera.

Effectively we have 3 ports that we can trigger simultaneously. Port A can be used to provide full featured extension of the Hot shoe, including driving a Flash in “Master“ mode to control wireless remotes over Infra Red and use full E-TTL functionality, you can also use it in High-Speed Sync mode. Port B is simply a trigger, such as you might use an optical slave for. Port C has the same functionality as port A, but one can only use one of the 2 at a time in full camera controlled mode, and the other port will just act as a trigger.

Full control of EX-II capable flash

An alternative way of working is to switch between the A&C ports to adjust the power setting of the flashes in manual mode without needing to leave the camera position and have a very short cable and Skyport radio transmitter letting one mix Speedlights and Studio Strobes attached through port B.

This kit came in under £40, to which one has to add a few RJ-45 cables, which I had to hand anyway.

Related Posts

• Macro and short depth of field
• For want of a nail — a belated review of the TrekPod Go
• Help my menu settings keep vanishing!
• So… What is “Pro” a code for?
• Photo Selection Slideshows
• International Power
• Eye-Fi vs Shooting Tethered
• YN565 E-TTL Flash Speedlite fails with Canon ST-E2
• Another Speedlight replacement
• Seasonal Toys & Games
• Pixel Wired Off-Camera Extender
• Tethering (Continued)

The "Stuck On Earth" iPad App

The Camera Club is heading out in early May (Bank Holiday Weekend) to Bodelwydnn Castle Hotel, North Wales, and there were a couple of spots that are on my “Must See” list for the trip, In particular Pontcysyllte Aqueduct the new World Heritage Site, and Sir Clough William Ellis’ famous Portmeirion Village, background for the cult TV series “The Prisoner,” after that it is simply a case of where the whim takes one… or is it?

Trey Radcliff famous for his HDR style, and “Stuck in Customs” travel photography blog, has had an iPad & Android App built called “Stuck on Earth” which uses Flickr geotagged photos, and various cool aspects of Flickr’s organisation and cataloguing to pick some existing images to find the spots & shots others have shared, and challenge one to do better.  It downloads the photos one picks out as trip markers to the portable device so that the challenge remains with one, even when out of WiFi range, or failing again with mobile data networks.  (BTW go into a trip and the add image interface will let you remove shots)

I haven’t found out how to edit the spelling of a failed search (vs retyping from scratch) but otherwise I’m finding it fairly useful for picking out some potentially interesting spots.

The battery packs each have 2 banks of 4 cells, so you can use 4 or 8 cells in each pack, and when attached to the speedlight, these are what powers the flash high voltage / power section, while the internal batteries only run the logic and control circuitry.  Pixel suggests that they can run your speedlight for over 500 full flashes before needing recharged, (possibly more with the newer 2900 mAh cells) and another big advantage is that being flat they also have better heat loss properties than the bundle inside the speedlight, (and also a thermal cut-out) so reducing your chance of melting that expensive flash unit.

The plug fits both Canon 580, 580 MkII and Nissin Di866 Mk II.  There is a different model number for the Nikon and Sony compatible versions.

As for Games, I’m going to try to keep up with the LensProToGo 52 week challenge on Flickr, come and join in — as the adage goes “It’s not about winning, it’s about taking part” and maybe we’ll all be stretched along the way.

Related Posts

• Macro and short depth of field
• For want of a nail — a belated review of the TrekPod Go
• Help my menu settings keep vanishing!
• So… What is “Pro” a code for?
• Photo Selection Slideshows
• International Power
• Eye-Fi vs Shooting Tethered
• YN565 E-TTL Flash Speedlite fails with Canon ST-E2
• Another Speedlight replacement
• Seasonal Toys & Games
• Pixel Wired Off-Camera Extender
• Tethering (Continued)

Joint them for a photo-per-week challenge on themes they set.  My photos will accumulate in this flickr set, and the  whole set of entries is in the Lens Pro To Go 52 week challenge.  The exercises are are as hard, or easy as you let them be, so it’s great fun.

Why not join in?

It’s free to enter, so probably worth following this link and filling in the entry form to get a chance to win. I quite fancy the bag itself, but there are already a whole lot of really worthwhile goodies added, and a daily chance at one of their superior shoulder bags

Good luck!