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Tethered shooting with iPhoto

Mon, 07/30/2007 - 21:45 — Alan

Scenario: You have a digital camera with a USB connection such as the Nikon D80 Digital SLR Camera and the standard Apple software package of iLife, including iPhoto and want to do tethered shooting.

There's no direct way to do this, no options in the menu, there's no software included with the Nikon camera that supports this and, as you may have found out, iPhoto isn't very well catered-for in Automator. I believe some other DSLRs such as the Canon EOS 400D do provide for tethered shooting, but if you've got a Nikon, then you need to do something different. You can buy software to do it, but luckily if you want to do it for free, there is a way.

OS X 10.4 includes automator and apple scripts. We can do this using automator and image capture.

- Firstly set the camera's USB mode to PTP.

- Download and install the automator scripts to download images from camera - you may need to edit the workflow to add a slight pause so that the photo file has enough time to download from the camera

- Ensure this downloads to a known folder

- Write a folder action to launch image capture

- Have image capture import new photos to iPhoto

- Connect the camera to the Mac

- switch the camera on and set-up the shot

You can do tethered shooting now by launching the workflow. Every time you press it, the file is downloaded to the folder specified in the workflow, this monitor function picks up on the added file and imports it into iPhoto. Hey presto - tethered shooting on the cheap. It's not brilliant, but it does work. 

I realise I haven't given all the details here, mainly because I'm on a different computer right now. If people are interested, let me know and I can go into more accurate detail about how I got it to work


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Comments

Thu, 08/16/2007 - 10:22 — Alan

solutions

Thanks for the comments. Funnily enough, while you were looking, I was also trying to solve a few issues and writing a more detailed version of the article. Mainly I was being more accurate about how the process worked and how users can do it themselves. 

It sounds like there are a few separate issues that may come together depending on what the user wants to achieve.

1) the script to import files from specific folders - Check the new, more detailed article for information. I think Aperture hotfolders may be a better way to go. 

2) Nikon don't provide software for the D80 and similar DSLRs - so Nikon users have to provide their own software. Shame.

3) Tethered shooting initiated with cable rather than by mouse - the download image actions are potentially more useful there since we don't need to initiate the photo from Automator, but as the previous comment mentions, check the oreilly link. Lots of useful information on there. 

thanks

Alan


Thu, 08/16/2007 - 09:31 — Anonymous

Hi, found just the solution

Hi, found just the solution here:

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/12/05/tethered-shooting-in-aperture.html

text starts from paragraph 'Setting up Automator' works als fine with iPhoto 


Thu, 08/16/2007 - 08:47 — Anonymous

Tethered shooting with iPhoto

Hello
I like your artikel about Tethered shooting with iPhoto. But also missed some important details. I tried myself with Automator. I can make an ‘automated workflow’ to released the shutter with a click of my mouse and import the file in iPhoto. But it is not working with the release button on my camera. So I need some kind of ‘hot’ folder. For Aperture there is a script that does the job I read here: http://automator.us/aperture/example-04.htmlBut I ‘ve not the knowledge to convert this script for iPhoto. I prefer to use the software delivered with my camera (Leica camera capture). This program can control the  camera and can write the files to a map of your choice. That works fine. The next step I can’t solve. How do I instruct iPhoto to automatic import all the files that come in that specific map?Can you give some more details about your method?Greetings from the Netherlands: Clemens