Introduction to tethered shooting - If you are able to connect your camera directly to the computer, Lightroom has the potential to let you import image files directly from the camera.
Photographs can be quickly brought into Lightroom, bypassing the need for a camera card and having to configure the Import settings every time you import a batch of images.
This is also referred to as ‘tethered shooting’ and I say Lightroom has the potential to do this because Lightroom will need to rely on other software that can communicate with your camera and download capture files to a specified folder location.
With this in place, Lightroom can be configured to automatically import these images into the library.
Connecting the camera to the computer
To shoot in tethered mode you need the ability to connect your camera to the computer. Ideally, you want the fastest connection possible. Most professional digital SLRs will offer a Firewire (IEEE 1394) connection, which in practice will allow you to shoot and download at around the same speed as you can with a fast camera memory card. The only downside is that you have to have your camera connected to the computer via a Firewire cable and this can restrict the amount of freedom you have to move about without pulling the cable out, or worse still, pulling a laptop computer off the table! Another option is to shoot wirelessly.
At the time of writing there are wireless units available for some digital SLR cameras that will allow you to transmit images directly from the camera to a base station linked to the computer. Wireless shooting offers you the freedom, up to a certain distance, to move about without the restrictions of a tethered cable. But the current data transmission speeds with some cameras are a lot slower than those you can expect from a Firewire connection.
Rapid shooting via a wireless connection can work well if you are shooting in JPEG mode, but not if you intend shooting raw files only. But that may change in the future. On Nikon equipment, you can shoot wirelessly via ptp or ftp. It appears so far, that ptp is better, and should rival Firewire, since ptp should handle things much faster due to the compression built into the transmission.
Camera capture software
Lightroom is able to appropriate the tethered shooting component of the camera communication software and from there, directly take over the image processing and image management. Here’s how it works: the camera communication software can be instructed to download the files to a specific folder location and once the files appear in this ‘watched’ folder, Lightroom can be instructed to immediately copy the files into the Lightroom library. And because the files are simultaneously deleted from the watched folder, you effectively bypass the camera software and the images will appear directly in Lightroom.
At this point in time I can confirm that it is possible to use Lightroom in conjunction with the Canon Viewer software designed for the Canon EOS range of cameras. Below. I have outlined the steps that would be needed to setup a Canon EOS camera such as the EOS 1Ds MkII to auto-import the files directly into Lightroom.
Nikon users will find that Nikon Capture includes a Camera Control component that allows you to do the same thing as the Canon software and establishes a watched folder to download the images to. The latest version of Nikon Capture supports all the D Series cameras as well as the Nikon Coolpix 8700. Alternatively, you might want to consider buying Bibble Pro 4.7 software from Bibble Labs. Bibble Pro costs a lot less than Nikon Capture. It enables tethered shooting with a wide variety of digital cameras, and again, allows you to establish a watched folder for the downloaded images. As I say, I have not been able to test these other programs out yet, but you should be able to adapt the following steps to work with Lightroom.
The steps shown here demonstrate how to use the Auto Import feature using the Canon EOS Viewer utility program that is supplied free with the Canon EOS range of cameras. At the time of writing, these are the only cameras that I have been able to test shooting with in tethered mode. Although you won’t need to use the program to view and process the imported files, you need to leave EOS Utility running in the background because it is needed to interact with the connected camera.
1. To begin with, launch EOS Viewer utility and click the Preferences button. Under Destination Folder, click Browse… to select a watched folder and click OK. Quit the program for now (you need to relaunch in order for the new folder location to be recognized).
2. Now go to Lightroom and open the preferences located in the Lightroom menu (or use Command+, (Mac) or Control+, (PC). Click on the Import tab, click to Enable Auto-Import and then click on the Choose… button to select the same watched folder as was selected in Step 1. But before leaving the Import preferences, click on the Auto Import Settings… button.
3. Here is the Auto Import Settings sub dialog, which will allow you to configure the Import settings for the auto imported files. These will be applied to all the images that are about to be captured and for the duration of the shoot (you will want to reconfigure these settings on a job by job basis). In the example shown here, I established a File Naming and renumbering scheme using the tokens available from the fly-out menu. You can select a bulk metadata template, select which custom Develop settings to use and, if you like, enter custom Keywords to apply to all the files as they are imported.
4. You are now almost ready to shoot. Make sure the camera is tethered to the computer and switched on. Launch EOS Viewer and click on the Connect to Camera button, which will launch EOS Capture. You can now use the camera as normal by pressing the shutter release, or use the EOS Capture utility to capture pictures remotely by clicking on the blue camera button in the dialog.
5. As you start shooting, the EOS Viewer utility will bring the camera files directly into the watched folder you selected in Step 1. From there, Lightroom will recognize that a new image has been added to the watched folder and import these captures as a new shoot using the Auto import settings. Once everything has been configured, you should be able to carry on taking pictures all day with the camera connected to the computer and all the images will be processed automatically using the settings entered in Step 3.
Caution! The Auto Import settings in Beta 4 do not allow you to save backup files to a secondary location, as you can with the normal Import dialog. Make sure you remember to periodically make manual copies of your auto imported files throughout the shoot.
Tips when using Lightroom in tethered mode
It should be possible to configure the Auto Import settings once at the beginning of a shoot and everything you photograph subsequently will be handled completely automatically. But of course, things can never be guranteed to run so smoothly. One thing to watch out for is if you update the Develop settings used in the Auto Import, you will need to reselect this again before you continue shooting. If the camera becomes disconnected, or the battery runs down, you may not always be able to plug it back in and carry on as before. In Beta 4 at least, you may sometimes need to create a fresh shoot via the Import preferences.
When you shoot using the tethered mode it is useful to see new images appear at the top of the content area as they are imported. To enable this, go to the View menu and choose Sort ➯ Descending. You may want to switch the sort order back to Ascending again for normal editing.
Further information about wireless shooting
Here is an interesting technology to look out for in the future: Eye-Fi are about to introduce a product called Eye-Film, which is a media card incorporating 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and 1 GB of Flash storage. Eye-Film will come in the form of an SD card (a Compact Flash Type-II adapter will allow digital SLR users to put these in cameras witout an SD slot). Once you start shooting the card will transfer photos from within your camera to any computer with Wi-Fi support. With Eye-Film, the originals remain on the card as well as transmitting to the computer. So far it is known that only JPEG files can be transmitted in this way. For more information, go to: www.eye.fi.
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book
Peachpit will be publishing The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening. Martin has been working with Lightroom from the beginning, providing feedback to Lightroom’s development well before the public beta and monitoring the product’s development. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes Lightroom’s features in detail and with photographers in mind. The book is aimed at photographers at all levels: amateurs as well as professionals and will offer a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about the program. Photographers who routinely work with raw images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.
