June 10, 2015

Tethered Shooting in Lightroom CC


These days, more and more people are shooting tethered. Maybe you’re asking yourself, what is tethered shooting and when or why would I want to shoot tethered?

For myself, I shoot tethered for a few different reasons, but mostly because I want to view my images on my monitor instead of the little LCD on the back of my camera. Plus, I set it up so I can also have my images loaded directly into a folder on the computer instead of filling up a memory card.

Image 1
This can be especially nice if your shooting portraits, because you can view your photos on the large monitor instantly and make sure you’ve got the shot correct immediately and share it with your subject or client right on the spot. A lot of times, the person your shooting will loosen up a little bit if they see what you’re doing and how the shots look.  This could also come in handy if you were working with an art director because they wouldn’t have to stop your session to view images on the cameras LCD screen.  

Sometimes I’ll shoot tethered when I’m home doing some Macro work. I’m a Canon shooter so most of the time when I’m doing Macro I prefer to use Live View with the Canon software because I can make finer adjustments like focusing, on the spot and see them on my laptop screen.

Some of you are already familiar with shooting tethered, and if you’ve done this in previous versions of Lightroom you’ll notice nothing has really changed, sorry.

For this tutorial I’m using my laptop connected to one of my cameras, in this case it’s a Canon Mk II, with a with a 15 foot USB cable. You might also want to secure your cord when tethering with a device called a Jerkstopper, but if you’re careful you shouldn’t have any problems. 

Image 2
To start a shooting tethered, go up under File scroll down to Tethered Capture and select Start Tethered Capture.    (see image 1)
When the Tethered Capture Settings dialog box opens you can customize this (pink boxes) and specify the name of the session, what template to use for incoming file names, where to store them and what metadata and keywords to use. In mine, I called my Session – New Blog Post, in the naming section I used Custom Name – Sequence and Custom Text called Fender Guitar and started numbering them from # 1.  Below that you’ll see I have a folder on my desktop called Tethered shooting as my Destination and I chose not to add any Metadata but put Samples for new Blog Post in the Keywords box.  Easy right?    ( see Image 2 )

When your  settings are all set, click OK to proceed.

This should put you in LR in the Library module and you’ll see the heads up display (HUD) for your tethered session. You’ll notice your camera model up in the top left corner, mine is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a big gray button on the other end.   
 ( Image 3 )


Image 3
Note:  If everything is connected but you get an error message “No Camera Detected”, you might need to adjust a settings on your camera. Check out your camera manual if you run into this problem.

On the HUD, you can set default develop setting to apply to your incoming images. Between the Tethered Settings dialog and this option on the HUD, you’ll get many of the same options that you would when importing them from your memory card. (see Image 3)

Now when you shoot you can use the shutter button on your camera (I prefer a cable release) or you can hit the big gray button on the HUD. Sometimes if my camera is on a tripod I’ll just use the gray button.

Now when you shoot, the images get loaded into the folder you chose and instead of previewing the image on the back of your camera, your laptop monitor becomes your LCD.



When you’re all done with your session, go up to File, Tethered Capture, Stop Tethered Capture. You can also just click the little X on the top right of the HUD if you want. You can see that Lightroom created a folder named after our session name called New Blog Post.  ( Image 4)

Basically that’s all there is to it. Your images are now sored in their own folder in your library and all ready for you to work on. I hope some of find this helpful.  Nice huh?­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Rememer, as always, keep shooting and have some fun!

 
© D. Gould Photography