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.
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| Image 1 |
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.
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| 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 )
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| 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!
